Amazon Awarded Cookie Patent

theodp writes "On Tuesday, the USPTO granted Amazon.com a patent for the Use of browser cookies to store structured data, which covers the storing of data structures and non-character data within browser cookies. In a February SEC filing (pdf), Amazon reiterated that they expect that they may license certain patents to third parties in the future."

Comments

CSV, etc?

[Joff_NZ]

wouldn't something like storing comma seperated values count as "structured"??

Give Amazon.com the finger

[kherr]

I worked at a company doing cutting-edge stuff and we were always looking for stuff to patent. Our intent was to create a defensive portfolio that would also look enticing to VCs. But we never, ever thought of pursuing patents on the patently obvious (pun intended).

One-click could be argued as a novel business practice. But crap like this is ridiculous. It's like the old joke of adding "with a computer" to anything and calling it novel. I've already moved to Powells for books, but I'll have to intensify my efforts to get others to stop shopping with Amazon.com.

Courts didn't like all of Morse's claims either

[pdcryan]

Morse (the telegraph guy) was awarded a patent claim for:

"electro magnetism, however developed for marking or printing intelligible characters, signs, or letters, at any distances."

Sound a little over-broad? The Supreme Court thought so too(1853). Broad claims get through the patent office sometimes. That's what courts are for. Will Amazon get some money out of this? Probably. Would I give them any money for it? No.

Cookie madness, anyone?

[Futurepower(R)]

I've often thought it would be interesting to write a program that caused stored cookies to be returned with with slight changes. You could load the program, browse Amazon, and see what happened.

They can store cookies if you allow them to store them. However, what you return is entirely your decision. It's your computer.

What do I do if *I* made Prior Art?

[Hank Reardon]

I know that I developed something to store data structures in Cookies prior to the filing date of January 31, 2000.

In the course of one of my contracts, I needed a nice way to impliment a next/previous page functionality without the use of a session table (long story as to why). I ended up using a cookie as a stack for that functionality.

The problem is that this code was written for a private, in-house data warehousing system, and I don't have the code.

Could I file a "friend of the court" or some other such brief on this matter describing how I implimented (for profit!) this technology before the patent date?