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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

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......

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...

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.

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.

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: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.

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.

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: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!"

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 (=

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.