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.

[isometrick]

So, does anyone think the newly elected Senate or the soon to be appointed Supreme Court justice(s) will do anything about the rampant abuse of the patent system?

I really hope so. I've never heard anything conclusive, though.

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.

[ppz003]

I know several online retailers (like Newegg) that show a "May we suggest" bar or a "Also purchased with this item" bar on the side of any product detail page. How is this anything new? And if they do win, how many other targets could they sue? It's just crazy.

Re:I See Prior art.

[NoMercy]

Which is totally false, and my opinion of law should be that every single digital thing has a real world law which already exists to cover the problem.

I'm still not totally sure why we need new laws to make copyright protection systems illegal to bypass, or to make the sale of machines which have the soul purpose of copyright infringement illegal.

After all if you write something and sign it at the bottom, if someone modifies that signature, it's fraud, and selling something to someone knowing there going to commit a crime with it is conspiricy to commit that crime.

Why did they need a new law?

Why do they press for new laws, is it impossible to simply relate modern practicaces to those which have been going on for hundreds of years, or do they want a clean slate, no case history so they can fight the same battles all over again?

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.

[hchaos]

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.

Sears isn't prior art for a couple reasons:

1. Sears catalogs are not customized to the desires of the individual shopper. This customization greatly increases the probability of an extra sale, thus satisfying the "usefulness" patent requirement.
2. The Sears process for sending out catalogs involves humans compiling data on who has made purchases into a mailing list. The Cendant process (presumably, I haven't actually read it) involves analyzing the purchase data of all its customers and using algorithms to determine that a given customer is likely to desire specific products because of similar purchasing patterns. These two processes are completely different, satisfying the "novelty" patent requirement.
3. Similarly, the algorithms for predicting which products a customer will want do not obviously derive from the Sears process, satisfying the "non-obviousness" patent requirement.

Of course, these points only apply to Sears catalogs. There may be other prior art that uses computers to run purchase-predicting algorithms (which would undermine the "useful" and "novel" claims unless Cendant's process had significant advantages over the prior art). There could even be prior art that used humans to process the same algorithms as Cendant, in which case the move to computers could be an "obvious" transition. The algorithm gives the process firm legal ground for the patent, because it's something that required effort to develop.

For more information, read this.

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.

[bleckywelcky]

Other forms of prior art:

Early 1900s hardware store ...
Shopper: *Buying some cast iron pipe for plumbing*
Shopkeep: Ah, I see you are buying some cast iron pipe for plumbing, would you also like a ball of twine and some lead to melt down and form the connections?
Shopper: Sure, thanks.
Shopkeep: You're welcome, that lead gets pretty hot when you make the connections, would you like some gloves to protect your hands too?
Shopper: Yeh, that sounds like a good idea.
Shopkeep: And just in case you get a little parched, there's a boy selling lemonade outside the door.
Shopper: Hot damn! That sounds dandy!

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.

Re:I See Prior art.

[maysonl]

Well, the conservatives actually were fiscally conservative till Bush got into office.

Yes - Reagan and Bush shrank the deficits and eliminated the national debt.

If you infringe this patent...

[What is a number]

If you infringe this patent you may also infringe...

---
I type this every time.

Re:If you infringe this patent...

[dedeman]

/.ers who liked this post also liked......

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.

Good! Bittter sweet irony.

[rainman_bc]

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

If it was anyone else being sued, I'd think this is getting really stupid. I mean, why not patent line-ups? Where does this crap end?

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."

Talked about this yesterday.

[blanks]

This deals with something that use used by thousands of websites, I even wrote a web application about 5 years ago that did this, and if I remember this patent is only about a year old? (could be wrong). Basically they say they own the idea of listing other customers opinions or recamendations of different products. For example, if you were looking at a pc, you would have things suchs as Members to ordered this product also ordered this monitor, or feedback about the pc from customers who did buy the item etc. This is totally a prior art situation, I dont know why this company didnt go after smaller companies, but if they get their trial by jury that would be a very very bad thing...

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.

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?

So much for that idea

[Tablizer]

I was going to give a list of the top 10 patent lawsuits, but now I am afraid to get sued.

Well...

[nightgrave]

I don't know about the rest of you, but I find Amazon to be an amazing tool to find other bands that I might like. I would really hate to see this go. If I have some extra cash laying around, I'll search for some bands that I like, look at the other recommendations, read the reviews and then I'll buy the cd if I like what I read. This is an extremely helpful tool that I will hate to see go just because some company decided to patent this common idea.

Sue me for breathing...

[LegendOfLink]

I'm still waiting for SCO to sue me for not licensing their patented, breathing mechanism which provides oxygen to the human body.

Bezos Told You So...

[lousyd]

When Amazon first got their infamous 1-Click patent, the response Jeff Bezos gave to the people who were up in arms over the patent issue was that it was defensive patenting. He said Amazon was patenting it just so that somebody else wouldn't and then sue them. It appears this story is a case of "I told you so", for Bezos.

Re:Bezos Told You So...

[Rashkae]

And of course, that must be why he "defensively" sued B&N? Jeff's definition of defensive means to defend against competitors competing, not against lawsuits.

Re:Bezos Told You So...

[einhverfr]

And of course, that must be why he "defensively" sued B&N? Jeff's definition of defensive means to defend against competitors competing, not against lawsuits.

Wow, Amazon must have the Bush Administration's official dictionary. They are using the same definition of defense!

Re:Ordinarily I would object to this kind of paten

[Ghent99]

I prefer: "What goes around comes around" ;) Seriously though, when are we going to overhaul these amazingly archaic patent laws? It's like watching a bunch of kids in a sandbox playing tag... eventually one of them punches another and they all start crying and peeing in the sand...

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)

SQL is dangerous

[Tablizer]

SELECT * FROM products ORDER BY total_sales DESC

Your secret formula is now exposed. Take that!

3D Patent Info

[FienX]

Just found some stuff on that 3D patent lawsuit. Filed in Texas (Eastern District). PACER lists and complaints at here and just incase you are intrested the list of defendants is:

6:04-cv-00397-LED

Hewlett-Packard Co
Dell Computer Corporation
Gateway Inc
International Business Machines Corp
Toshiba America Inc
Sony Corporation
Acer Inc
MPC Computers LLC
Systemax, Inc
Fujitsu America, Inc
Micro Electronics Corp
Matsushita Electric Corporation of America
Averatec, Inc
Polywell Company, Inc
Sharp Electronics Corporation
Twinhead Corp
Uniwill Computer International Corp
JVC Americas Corporation
Acer America Corporation
Micro Electronics Inc.
Fujitsu Computer Systems Corporation
Dell, Inc

6:04-cv-00398-LED

Electronic Arts, Inc.
Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc.
Activision Inc
Atari, Inc.
THQ, Inc.
Vivendi Universal Games, Inc.
Sega of American Inc.
Square Enix, Inc.
Tecmo, Inc.
Lucasarts Entertainment Co
Namco Hometek, Inc.
Ubisoft, Inc.

6:04-cv-00399-LED

Sony Corporation of America
Microsoft Corporation
Nintendo of America, Inc.

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.

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...

Off-topic: Amazon introduces queuing service

[Eric Giguere]

Speaking of Amazon, yesterday they unveiled their new Simple Queuing Service, their latest foray into web services. They're exposing some of their infrastructure in order to let you share data between distributed components. Free for the time being, though limited in terms of how much data you can queue at once.

Of course, someone will probably sue them over this, too.

Eric
William Shatner boldly goes like no man has gone before

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...

NBC Tried

[SteveM]

When Letterman switched networks the NBC tried to prevent him from using top ten lists.

They were not successful.

SteveM

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

Great Timing.

[clinko]

Good to hear this now; I stayed up until 4 a.m. last night writing the Recommended Function code to my site last night.

USPTO Link

[cOle2]

This seems to be the patent: System and method for providing recommendation of goods or services based on recorded purchasing history

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).'

HEY - I have SO got this sorted.

[Linker3000]

Ref MY new patent #0987612345:

"A method of attempted or actual revenue generation based on claiming damages for patent infringement from other parties, based on the ownership (or acting on behalf of the owner) of patents pertaining to actions or concepts that any sane person would consider blindigly obvious and not worthy of being covered by a patent."

These guys owe me aplenty!

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.

Cendant only have 3 patents...

[HavokDevNull]

All relating to the same thing just about

PAT. NO. Title 1 6,782,370 Full-Text System and method for providing recommendation of goods or services based on recorded purchasing history

2 6,076,070 Full-Text Apparatus and method for on-line price comparison of competitor's goods and/or services over a computer network

3 6,035,288 Full-Text Interactive computer-implemented system and method for negotiating sale of goods and/or services

All three

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:That's what publishing is for

[CustomDesigned]

Wrong. Prior art does not prevent anyone from filing for and obtaining a patent. It does not prevent them from suing you. I might help you win your case in court provided you have enough money to pay the lawyers.

That is just one of the ways in which the current patent system is broken - especially for software.

This patent is yet another example of patenting something that retailers have done for 100 years (Sears Catalog customized by past orders) - "but do it on the internet!"

• The first wave of stupid patents: do something that people have done for centuries - "but do it on a computer!" (E.g. Bingo on a computer was patented.)
• The second wave: do something on a computer that people have done on computers since 1960 - "but do it on the internet!"
• The third wave: do something that people have done on the internet since 1980 - "but do it on the web!"
• The fourth wave: do something that people have done on the web since the first browser - "but do it with web services!"

Someone should sue the patent office

[davidwr]

Someone should sue the patent office to publicly announce that all patents granted in the last 10-20 years are suspect on the grounds that the patent examiners were understaffed and could not have known about much of the prior art.

The net effect of this would be to overturn the "presumption of validity" on prior-art challenges.

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.

Here is the link to the patent

[nearl]

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PT O2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/search-bool.html&r =1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=ptxt&s1=Cendant&s2=recommend ation&OS=Cendant+AND+recommendation&RS=Cendant+AND +recommendation

Pardon, but the infringed on my patent

[HiyaPower]

entitled "A method of making money by claiming patent infringement on bogus patents of the painfully obvious and prior art."

They will hear from my lawyer shortly.

From Amazon---

[rdurell]

Under the "Patents, Copyrights & Trademarks for Dummies" book page:

Customers who bought this book also bought:

How to License Your Million Dollar Idea: Everything You Need To Know To Turn a Simple Idea into a Million Dollar Payday, 2nd Edition by Harvey Reese, Harvey Reese (Rate it)
Inventing for Dummies by Pamela Riddle Bird, Forrest M. Bird (Rate it)
The Complete Idiot's Guide(R) to Cashing in On Your Inventions by Richard C. Levy (Rate it)
Patent, Copyright & Trademark: An Intellectual Property Desk Reference (Patent, Copyright and Trademark) by Stephen Elias, Richard Stim (Rate it)
Patent It Yourself (Patent It Yourself) by David Pressman (Rate it)

Re:Obligatory prior art?

[AndroidCat]

They were supposed to get a lot of money from a licensing agreement with Roman Inc, but they got burned on the deal.

Re:Good! Bittter sweet irony.

[zoips]

Of course, the lawyers have already figured this out. They merely buy up patents and swing them around with impudence because they do nothing but litigate, therefore they have no fear of patent infringment. It's a win-win situation for law firms, which guarantees this will situation will be repeated ad infinitum.

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?

Amazon's technology is cited in the application!

[TrentC]

Seriously, there's a reference in patent application to the article "Amazon.com Catapults Electronic Commerce to Next Level With Powerful New Features", dated September 23, 1997 -- barely two weeks after the patent filing date. And the odds are good that it took Amazon.com a lot longer than two weeks to develop, test, and deploy that functionality.

But wait it gets better... reading further in the PR blurb, we see that their group filtering technology was based on an existing product, called Grouplens. I assume that this is the same kind of functionality that Cendant is claiming as their own work; if so, surely Grouplens must have something to say as far as prior art goes...

Jay (=

I'm going to get myself sued!

[Game Genie]

Watch this:

So guys, I see you read Slashdot. I saw some really leet gear on this one website you might like.

SHIT! I can already see the lawyers on the horizon!

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?

Forget revenge and irony.

[buddhaseviltwin]

Enough of these sort of headlines, and they begin to grab the attention of people that can have the biggest political impact on patent reform: INVESTORS.

Stories like these send investors a clear message about investing money in the software industry:

RUNAWAY PATENT SYSTEM = LEGAL LIABILITY FOR THEIR INVESTMENTS = BIG RISK

Whether that could translate into patent reform that aims to protect the little guy as much as it protects the big guy is another story. I would hope investors would recognize that it was the lack of software patents and regulation that helped incubate an industry that created some of the best investment opportunities in history. I also hope they will eventually realize that while software patents have helped a number of companies dominate market share, it's impeded much of the industry from adding value to the industry and the economy as a whole.

If I wanted to send Wall St. a message it would be this:

A patent is not a deed to the monopoly of idea; it's a license to subject your competitors to huge financial risk, but if you get too creative and ambitious it's a great way to subject yourself to that same looming financial risk.

I can't imagine why anybody would volunteer to subject their investments to a volatile atmosphere of severe legal liability.

I'm going to patent having sex to make babies

[theolein]

And sue every single motherfucker from George Bush across to Bill Gates through to Chairman Mao.

Jesus fucking Christ, where will this fucking bullshit end? When some dickwad patents methods of political manipulation and then sues whichever party is in power as owing him money?

I think I'm going to test the fucking patent system. I'm going to patent taking a dump and see if it goes through. Given the current level of crap, it might very well do so.

PRIOR ART, WITH FRIES

[tod_miller]

I walked into my local gyros shop, and after my usually geeky rss sync of his menu, and then hand coding a remot procedure call over a serial cable to his antiquainted register (which i had to write my own assembly language for) I successfully ordered a nice nourishing treat to feed my brain.

Of course, he wasn;t allowed to ask me 'the usual' which I have ordered 23590285094 times in my life at that place, because some people are using anticompetative measures to throw companies off with patents.

I have no money by myself to sue the US patent office for fraud, or all fruadulent patent holders, but I bet the computing community as a whole should feel obliugated to stop this shenanegans right now

Despite opening up an amazon package last night, I am totally pissed off with thier patent portfolio, but they might feel it is necessary to have dud patents to conteract other dud patents.

can we stop this madness soon

Anyone thinking of a new startup had better forget it, it is impossible to do anything now, because virtually everything we do on the internet is in violation of a patent or other.

JOIN ME SUE THE US PATENT OFFICE TODAY

Better yet, find some us patent people who downloaded MP3's, and some RIAA people downloading movies, and a movie industry giant writing software that infringes SCO (giggle) patents - THEN they can all sue themselves into insanity, and all the lawyers will die of heart attacks from eating too much from being so stinking rich, or yachting accidents, or ferrari accidents, and then the world shall be ok again.