Amazon Seeks Personal Search History Patent

theodp writes "The USPTO has published Amazon.com's patent application for Persistently storing and serving event data, which describes a9.com's personal search history feature and lists a9.com CEO Udi Manber as an inventor. Interestingly, claim 48 describes a user interface that responds to a user's request to "delete" his search history by rendering it "undisplayable" to him, but still leaving it accessible for other uses. When filed back in 2003, Amazon asked the USPTO not to publish the application, but rescinded that request last May, presumably in anticipation of its filing for an international patent."

Comments

but why ?

[puiahappy]

Everytime something good is about to happen there will be somebody to take that away from us why ? why ? why ?

Not to publish?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

The strange thing seems to be that there is an option to ask the USPTO not to publish a patent application. I appreciate that this is the same as not publishing a patent that has been granted, but since disclosure in exchange for temporary monopoly is the fundamental principle of patents, isn't having an unpublished procedure rather one-sided?

Re:Not to publish?

[ozric99]

Welcome to AmeriCorp.

Re:Not to publish?

[Foobar of Borg]

Well, there used to not be patent application publications in the U.S. at all. The USPTO started doing this in the year 2000 (cue Conan O'Brien!), thus copying what the Europeans had been doing for over a decade. Remember, a patent application does not give any legal protection. That is why you are not required to publish it. It is only after the patent has been granted, and you therefore have legel patent protection, that publication is required and is a matter of course.

In fact, not having an application published can actually be less advantageous. If, for example, you don't get a patent (happens quite often despite what crazed /.'ers say), the publication is still out there and can be used as prior art against a later application. In fact, it can help to apply for a patent even if you have no hope of ever getting one since the publication of it can be used as prior art against anyone else trying to patent the same thing.

Re:Not to publish?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Think you are the only ONE who is working for a great idea and you are all most done to 80% and to complete the remining 20% you need another good 24 months. Beeing in this situvation you applied for the patent and USPTO publishes it.

If you're that far from a working idea, you have not yet invented it, and you have no right to patent it. A patent should specify clearly how to reproduce your invention so that others could do the same. That is your side of the bargain, in exchange for the protection afforded by granting the patent. In your scenario, the USPTO should reject your patent, you should know that this is likely to happen, and if you're stupid enough to try and preempt competitors by legal means and make a hash of it, that's your problem.

Here we go again.

[GomezAdams]

Another stupid patent when copyright should be invoked. I supose that the sooner all the dumbass patents get filed and approved the sooner the court system will have to deal with them, the sooner the whole patent process will get overhauled. But then I expected by now to have flying cars, 3D TV, and a trophy wife, so what do I know. [*SIGH*]

Yup. . .

[Bastian]

Still not buying stuff from Amazon.com.

Search history permanent and identifiable?

[OgGreeb]

(This is addressing only the privacy issues of deleting search histories, not the patent issues.)

*Of course* when I deleted my search history on A9, it only pretended to delete it by hiding it from me, but still providing it to other "clients of the event history server" (from the patent application). I mean, toolbar applications like the Google toolbar (appear to) have set the standard that you can delete your personally-identifiable search history to prevent privacy intrusions, but why should that prevent Amazon from profiting from that information to my detriment? Concerns like morally corrupt, ethically challenged, etc., only apply to flesh-based persons with human issues, not legal-based persons (corporations) with only money issues.

I love the new A9 search tools, but until their overt privacy policies correspond to their covert privacy policies, I'm going to be highly discriminating in when I use A9/Amazon to search for anything.

Re:Search history permanent and identifiable?

[JGski]

> Concerns like morally corrupt, ethically
> challenged, etc., only apply to flesh-based
> persons with human issues, not legal-based
> persons (corporations) with only money issues.

:-)

Except if there are to be two standards for ethics and morality dependent on being flesh-based vs. legal-based entities, then certainly there should be clear distinctions and limits on person-hood and entitlement to constitutional protections - that is, corporations should not be granted unalienable rights that are granted by the constitution and bill of rights to human beings. Yet such constitutional rights are currently granted to corporations. Thus as corporations are granted "inalienable human rights" of the US Constitution, it is reasonable to insist that corporations be required to behave morally and ethically just as human citizens are required to by the letter and spirit of the laws and entitlements of the US.

The underlying flaw, though, is that only flesh-based entities are actually capable of either being affected by or fulfilling the duties that come with constitutional rights. By this we include specific duties like serving in national defense and jury duty, but also broader duties like simply obeying the law, or not impinging on the rights of other citizens without risk of concommitant punishment.

The problem is punishment for misdeeds of commission and omission with regard to citizen duties: corporations are granted rights with no effective or enforceable duties. As a human citizen I know that if I violate the law (and either directly or indirectly the US constitution) I can lose my citizen rights (jail) and means for enjoying my citizen rights (money). Corporation structure fundamentally insulates owners and owner-proxies (i.e. boards and executives) from legal liability from all but the most obvious and egregious criminal acts. Civil violations are punished against only the lifeless corporate shell itself. Even when attempts are made to punish, the corporation faces orders of magnitude milder impact, as a fine-to-revenue ratio. The checks and balances of citizenship exist for humans but not for corporations.

In additional to having the enforcement of duties defanged, the additional problem is that hierarchal organization inherently amplifies, and often distorts, the morality and ethics of those at the top. If a corporation's executives are simply morally and ethically weak, or worse, borderline sociopaths themselves (we all know of such a leader and such an organization) then the organization easily becomes a full-blown sociopathic entity, perversely with citizen constitutional rights but with no enforceable duties as citizens.

Individuals with such traits (e.g. Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, et al.) can be and are removed from impinging their evil on society in perpetuity, yet sociopathic corporations are not condemnable nor constrainable by the state or society for their sociopathic behavior. The worst-case scenario is a corporation might be broken-up or liquidated, but ultimately the humans leading the corporation can trivially walk away and start another corporation, effectively "reincarnating the evil" of the dead sociopath - even Charles Manson only gets one lifetime chance to inflict his sociopathology and then society locks him up and throws away the key, losing all future opportunities. While the individual must balance their own mortality and free will against evil in their heart, corporations have no mortality to be concerned with and the wizard behind the curtain are legally insulated from their deeds of control - this radically changes the checks and balances on citizenship and behavior as citizens.

An immortal corporation can not be jailed or effectively killed thus isn't affected by any of the downsides of punishments for violating laws derived from the constitution or other citizens' constitutional rights. Further a co

CEO as Inventor?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a new one on me. All he was doing was saying "is there any way we can have them delete the search history and still keep it?". The engineers went off and probably said "um, let's add a display flag to search results." That's an appended query and a small change to the deletion code. That's not patentable!

That's all this is isn't it? They've patented a bit field to describe whether something is displayed or not. Prior art for that has been around for absolutely ages. Yet again a classic case of a small, simple and commonly used piece of programming being somehow the basis of a full patented business process. Absolutely bloody stupid!

Re:Right idea, wrong title...

[MightyMartian]

UPDATE cust_table SET visible=0 WHERE cust_id=284233;

Truly amazing. What a unique and original system. I can't imagine anybody ever used such a thing before.

Re:Could be a blessing in disguise in the long run

[Richard_at_work]

The one glaring hole I've found with UK data protection legislation is that you can't forcibly remove information somebody has about you as long as the information is correct.

Its not a hole, its there deliberately and its there in part to protect companies. Imagine for a second you could force a company to remove valid data about you - business relationship or not. Youve just gained the right as an individual to always have a perfect credit rating, as you can always get Experian etc to remove bad entries from your credit record.

A company also needs to know if it wants to deal with you or not - maybe youve been a bad customer in the past, IE returning a lot of products. Yes, you have the right to do that, but a company also has the right not to deal with you. If they couldnt store that information, you can continue on being a 'bad' customer because they can never know beyond that transaction.

Some companies do store more information than necessary, and this should be looked at, but I do not support the wholesale removal of information upon request.

Re:Could be a blessing in disguise in the long run

[nacturation]

Youve just gained the right as an individual to always have a perfect credit rating, as you can always get Experian etc to remove bad entries from your credit record.

In that case, you wouldn't have a perfect credit rating -- you'd have no credit history, which most institutions consider as bad as a poor credit history.