Amazon Patents Getting Numbers Off a Check

theodp writes "After two rejections, Amazon was granted a patent Tuesday for the Extraction of bank routing number from information entered by a user, which covers the process of obtaining a routing and checking account number from information entered by a user from the face of a check. The patent application was filed in the week preceding Amazon's Call for Patent Reform."

Comments

Coming Soon...

[shadwwulf]

a patent for the act of accepting money from customers...

The idiocy continues...

What we need is...

[lounger540]

a patent for passing stupid patents. That'll show em.

Re:Prior art from the stone age.

[base3]

Not that it should be patentable, but that's not what the patent is about. What it describes is a means of guessing which 9 digits are the Federal Reserve RTN by seeing which are the first 9 consecutive digits to pass the check digit test.

A means of doing the same thing without infringing on this patent (which should never have been granted) would be to check to see which 9 digits are in a list of all known RTNs. In case Amazon was going to patent that to, mark the time of this post as prior art.

mouth hanging open...

[Anonymous Coward]

Man, I *seriously* need to start patenting all the shit I come up with. Not because I want to sue people, but because one of these days I'm going to *get* sued.

I can't believe this is patentable. I do this stuff in my UI code all the time. It's a basic part of the "be liberal in what you accept" philosophy. Accept whatever is easiest for the user to type (or cut and paste), then pluck out what you need.

Here's stuff I've done in programs, I'm sure anybody writing UI code has come up with this kind of stuff:

* extract USA zip code from an address by searching for numbers backwards from the end and comparing result against the USPS database

* extract dollar amounts from text by searching for numbers and dollar signs

* extract email ID's from cut/pasted or forwarded emails by searching for headers: newline or start of string, string, colon before a double newline

* extract eBay item numbers from emails based on length of digit string

* extract URLs from emails based on heuristics (there is even a perl module to do this)

Yeah, I've never had to code something to find check routing numbers, but damn, this would be the first thing I'd come up with! Tell me some identifiable property of the data, and I'll come up with a way to pluck it out. A couple regexes and a function to calculate the checksum or whatever it is.

Cripes. This is no longer funny. All self-employed programmers, start patenting your shit!!!!

I mean, your inventions!! I think Bezos has already patented defecation!!!

Well, HERE'S one patent they WON'T get . . .

[nusratt]

. . . because *i've* already filed for it:

"A Novel Method Of Enhancing Consumer Privacy, By Preferentially Purchasing At Local Community Establishments, Using Uniquely Serialized Pieces Of Paper Currency Bearing Detailed Engraved Portraits Of Deceased National Leaders".

Soon to be followed by:
"A Method For Consumers To Alter Shopping Behavior, For The Purpose Of Undermining The Market-Strength Of Philosophically Objectionable Corporations".

I found prior art!

[raider_red]

I think I found a prior art that can be used against enforcement of this patent. Text below:

Hello,

Please allow me to introduce my self. I am Natanba Colunga, and my husband was until recently the president of the Central African Republic... ...Please send your account number and routing number to this email address, and the money will be wired in tomorrow.