Amazon Sued Over Recommendation Patent

PaschalNee writes "Cendant is suing Amazon for their recommendation patent saying it infringes on a "System and Method for Providing Recommendation of Goods or Services Based on Recorded Purchasing History" patent they own. "

Comments

I See Prior art.

[stecoop]

Sears sent out Christmas catalogs based on past purchases; thus, it is prior art. Anything you could buy is in the catalog and anything bought at sears is in the catalog. Further more, this is a case whereby Sears provides a means of purchasing products via past purchases. Not too targeted yet you get a good lawyer to wrangle with this twist and you have yourself a case that could last years.

Re:I See Prior art.

[bay43270]

Wow! If only Sears had filed a patent for that...

It would have ran out 100 years ago

Re:I See Prior art.

[Pxtl]

Yes, but you forgot the magical digital rule, which was the basis for the DMCA: Everything is completely different when its on the internet, and can't be compared to any existing real world matters in any way.

Re:I See Prior art.

[G_Biloba]

Does this make "Do you want fries with that?" prior art?

Re:I See Prior art.

[Anonymous Coward]

It just sounds good to say they are for "small government" and makes a nice insult for the liberals to say that they are "big government". The fact is both parties are big government. Democrats are big government for the people, Republicans are big government for the corporations.

You have to pick which type of big government you want, but that would be nuance. As we all know, nuance is as evil as "big government" liberals.

Re:I See Prior art.

[Anonymous Coward]

There is Prior Art to seeing prior art.

Richard Feynman in his Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman tells of his dismissive disbelief at a Los Alamos bureaucrat asking for nuclear power patent suggestions, which were as easy as just taking any well-known device and upgrading it to work with nuclear power. Feynman though he proved his point by listing several totally obvious examples (atomic airplanes, atomic submarines, atomic automobiles, etc.) and was surprised much later when the bureaucrat told him that one of them was not yet taken, and it was now Feynman's very own little patent.

Re:I See Prior art.

[the_mad_poster]

It irritates me when people make these comparisons.

At one time, the republican party DID stand for shrinking government, fiscal conservatism, and a host of other things. Guess what? At one time, all the racists were democrats. Guess what? Pointing out that fact about the democratic party now is nonsense. Why? Because all the racists swung into the republican party for myriad reasons. Guess what? Fiscal conservatism seems to have swung to the democrats as the last 24 years should attest.

You can't look at these stupid labels and say "well, this person or group must then stand for x, y, and z". It doesn't work like that anymore. There are too many politicians passing around too much disinformation and blurring all sorts of lines to get as much support from the electorate as possible. There's no real government anymore, it's just a bunch of power mad people desperately trying to take things over and preserve their own hides.

Saddest part of it all? Nobody gives a fuck and they keep voting against those horrible "lefties" or those knuckle-dragging "conservatives" anyway. If people stood the fuck back for five goddamn minutes and actually looked intelligently at who they were voting for, they'd be absolutely disgusted.

Re:I See Prior art.

[hazem]

Does it even have to be all that.

I've gone to the "usual" bar, and many times, the bartender tells me, "We just got this ____ in. You usually drink ____, but I think you'll like this one."

Same with the local library. I go there to pick up some books I've reserved online, and the librarian says, "Oh, I see you're reading a lot of ____. Have you read any ___? I think you'd enjoy it."

That's all this stupid thing is on Amazon or the idoits that are suing them.

It's really sad.

Frivolous

[Dekks]

These patent suits are getting sillier and sillier, whats to stop someone saying I'm going to file a patent now for "Using a credit chip to pay for goods and services via the internet or online kiosk booths" and waiting 25 years for the demise of physical money and then suddernly cashing in on what was obvious. I really hope suits like these start getting thrown out with all court costs pushed onto the company that bought the suit.

Ordinarily I would object to this kind of patent.

[JamesSharman]

But there is a little truth in the old saying. "He who lives by the sword, Dies by the sword."

Patent lawsuits

[ilyagordon]

I thought patents were a way to stop someone from stealing another person's idea or invention. However, it seems that most of the patent lawsuits lately are against people and companies who invented similar things without stealing anything. How is anything considered your intellectual property when another person acquired the same "property" without any knowledge of you?

Re:Good! Bittter sweet irony.

[nebaz]

While this is true, it is not good. I don't wish for this type of misfortune on my worst enemies, as if found legal, will still be a precedent for evil. Just like violence begetting violence, an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. (Ghandi was a smart man)

Prior Art

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm, anyone who ever owned any sort of shop or vended anything out of a tent since time immemorial and who said to his customer "Say Yaga, Maybe you'd like some butter to go with that bread? How about some Jam - I have the flavor that Bakla likes - you could keep her happy for a week with this jam you could!" would be fucken prior art...

Patent examiners are supposed to be SMART people, but they actually have no common horse sense...

Well, the most obvious obstacle to this...

[PornMaster]

...is that the patent will have expired in 25 years.

*sigh* some people...

Re:Ordinarily I would object to this kind of paten

[datbox]

Still doesn't make it right.

The moral of the story is to NEVER support lawsuits like this. Never.. Ever.. ..

Seriously...

Re:Good! Bittter sweet irony.

[Krow10]

After the BS around one-click shopping, Amazon gets exactly what they deserve.

While it is somewhat satisfying to see Amazon hoist be their own petard, I still think that this is an example of software patents stiffling innovation. Two wrongs still don't make a right, but poetic justice is something of a consolation. The system still needs to be fixed.

Cheers,
Craig

Re:3D Patent Info

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting. I didn't see ATI, Nvidia or even Intel on the list given those three guys are the biggest shipper of graphics hardware

Just how broad is the patent?

[NaugaHunter]

Years ago I worked on hospital systems that would recommend possible needed treatments based on what you were having done. Would it apply there?

As much as Amazon might deserve patent karma, this isn't it. This is quite definitely as opposite as you can get from 'non-obvious', even more so then one-click. One click at least required the new technology (cookies); buying recommendations have been going on as long as there have been sales people. 'You know, other people that bought Oggs-brand Wheel(TM) also bought Oggs-brand Club(TM).'

patent

[geg81]

Patent number is 6,782,370, filed September 4, 1997. The distinguishing feature relative to prior recommendations basd on purchase history is that it is over "distributed network".

Such systems had been in use and published for several years before the patent was filed, so this shouldn't stand. But, given Amazon's history with stupid patents, one can only hope that both Amazon and Cendant lose lots of money in the legal fight.

That's what publishing is for

[davidwr]

If you have an idea and don't want to be sued by someone's future patent, PUBLISH IT.

Prior art is the easiest way to fight a patent.

Re:Letterman to be sued next for Top 10 List?

[Steve Franklin]

Do you suppose I could patent a top eleven list? For that matter, I wonder if I could patent the eleven commandments? Aha! I have had an enlightenment! I will patent all lists of rules that consist of a prime number of components.

Re:Good! Bittter sweet irony.

[gcaseye6677]

Like other corporate trends such as six sigma, offshore outsourcing, quarterly layoffs and mission statements, patent barratry will be considered essential for a while, Fortune magazine will rave about the need to "protect your intellectual property", then it will die down. Once companies see that it costs far more money than they could ever take in from it, and all proceeds go to the lawyers, this will fall out of fashion. Until then, the damage will be costly, especially to small companies which can't afford a big fight.

Re:3D Patent Info

[gr8_phk]

I didn't get exactly what part of 3D stuff they are claiming. Atari produced 3D wireframe video games in the 1970s and the first flat shaded one in 1983 (I, Robot - which had several patents of its own). There is obvious prior art before Atari depending what exactly they claim to own.

except

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything is completely different when its on the internet, and can't be compared to any existing real world matters in any way.

Except, of course, in the case of treating information as if it were property.

And the winner is....

[DaFrogBoy]

And the winner is.... Once again, it is the lawyers. When will people learn? Why does today's society insist on suing one another for every (in)feasible thing?

Defeating the Overall Objective of IP Protections

[4of12]

Pardon my naivete, but aren't all of these patents and intellectual property law protections supposed to encourage innovation and overall provide maximum benefit to society?

I see a great deal of innovation that is unprotected (open source) that, precisely because it is so unencumbered, serves to invite more and more rapid innovations built upon it.

Crazy.

Re:Ordinarily I would object to this kind of paten

[Java Pimp]

Seriously though, when are we going to overhaul these amazingly archaic patent laws?

Actually, I don't really beleive it's the laws that need overhauled but the patent system in general. Patents (or atleast the concept of) were at one time a good thing. However, these tools working in the patent system are clueless. They seem to be forgetting two very important terms when it comes to granting pattents. "Unique" and "non-obvious". (I'm sure we can slip 'not overly broad' in there somewhere too).

Recommending items to customers is definitely not something new and unique and has been done on and off the net for years. Hell... "would you like fries with that?" or "this coat would go great with that vest"...

Granted, I haven't read the complaint or the terms of the patent, and that 5 sentence article gives just enough information to raise everyone's blood pressure and not much else. The general "Recommending shit based on what others wanted" in itself isn't patentable. It's overly broad and obvious as hell. Now, if Cendant has patented "a unique method of storing user information and presenting recommendations to others" and Amazon is using "that exact same method" then they have a case.

One company may hold a patent on a particular mouse trap, but no-one can hold a patent on "trapping mice." If Cendant were able to obtain such a pattent, may [your respective deities] help us all...

Anyone have anymore information on the complaint?

Re:Talked about this yesterday.

[theancient2]

More generally, it's data mining. Take a database, apply a few formulas, get some interesting information. Will every data mining application be patented?

It's not a standard course in any university computer science program, but lots of people learn this stuff. Once you learn the theory, lots of applications become obvious--and recommendation systems are probably at the top of the list.