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

That's good news

[Anonymous Coward]

I wanted to implement a cookie-driven Web site for a long time, but was clueless as for who I had to pay for using the technology.

Now I can finally download and install HTTP Cookie Library and send my license check to Amazon.

CSV, etc?

[Joff_NZ]

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

Bogus, but specific

[spRed]

So the patent looks silly on the face, but the opening claims are easy to work around and make it hard for them to sue:

a method of incorporating at least one data structure from the database into a browser cookie to reduce accesses to the database

Okay, the stuff I'm storing in the cookie isn't the same as a structure in my database. FOAD. You think it is? I say it is half a structure from my database. Or one item from each of five structures in my database.

They could drown you in lawsuits, but they didn't need a patent to do that anyway.

Prior Art

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know man, Cheech and Chong have been putting some pretty wild shit in their cookies for decades!

Multiple reactions, pick the one you like.

[SmallFurryCreature]

• The optimist

  Geez again? TIMING you idiots April fool starts on the 1st of april. Not on 31st of march. Geez. Is it that hard to read a calendar? And a good april fools joke is funny because people are tricked into thinking something that clearly couldn't be true. USPTO passing a silly patent does not qualify.

• The evolutionist

  What kind of insect could possibly not see the bloody obviousness off this one. Use a cookie to store data. Well fucking duh. What next? Patent the use of an engine to power something? A trunk to carry luggage? A shovel to dig with? Outsourcing is bad enough but hiring lower lifeforms goes to far!

• The pessimist with a gun

  This story only goes to show patent reform is impossible. Nothing will help here anymore but the old "put them against the wall" at the revolution. Going to be really crowded too. What will all the lawyers, ceo's, outsources, alcohol free beer inventors and people who talk in caps on the web.

• The European

  Anyone else find it slightly odd that all the idiot patent stories come from america? Wonder why the USPTO is unable to hire any smart people. Is the USPTO banned from hiring non-americans?

Come on you weren't expecting any serious response were you? Feeble jokes for a feeble joke of an institution.

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.

Shot in the foot.

[Oncogene]

You know, the US Patent Office's website uses cookies that would violate this patent.

So

[dtfinch]

Their method appears to be for storing a binary copy of the entire customer record, encoded (base64 or similar), encrypted, and checksummed, into a cookie. As prior-art as the title of the patent may appear, I haven't seen it done in exactly this fashion.

If you do it without encryption or without a checksum then you're probably not infringing. Same if you avoid binary encoding. If you save a textual representation of the record, and use a form of encryption that works on plain text, you can achieve the same effect without infringing.

And if someone tries to patent my idea, I'll make business very hard for them.

Re:So

[greppling]

If you do it without encryption or without a checksum then you're probably not infringing. Same if you avoid binary encoding.

That's not how I read the claims. The basic claims are 1, 10, 18, 26, 35, 40. Adding encryption or checksums to storing the data structures as cookies are covered by separate claims, always listed in addition to the basic claims.

The whole point of this patent is IMO what they call "schema data". By this they mean having a separate file that describes the data structure used in the cookies, so that the way the data structures can be changed without changing the code en/de-crypting the cookie. (Claim 1.) Unless someone is using such a metafile describing the data structure, and has written a generic cookie parser that is controlled by this metafile, I am pretty sure he will not be infringing the patent. This is, of course, not revolutionary, but it's definitely much better software design than the typical PHP/MySQL web site.

Adding versioning of the data structures is claim 7. Claim 26 is then about using this data to generate personalized web pages from the cookie data without any database lookups.

So, IMHO this patent isn't that silly. You most likely don't have to "work around" it just because you are storing some structured user data in cookies, it is to the contrary very unlikely that you are infringing it. Definitely, all posts here have missed the "schema data" aspect so far. Maybe there is prior art for this, but if there is, noone has pointed out any so far.

I think the only good reason to be against this patent is to be against software patents in general. Which I am, btw:)

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.