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 When filed back in 2003, Amazon asked the USPTO not to publish the application, but rescinded that request last May, presumably in anticipation of its filing for an international patent."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

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but since disclosure in exchange for temporary monopoly is the fundamental principle of patents, isn't having an unpublished procedure rather one-sided?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?

[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.

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!