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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 When filed back in 2003, Amazon asked the USPTO not to publish the application, but rescinded that request last May, presumably in anticipation of its filing for an international patent."
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.
Holy cow. I think they should change the patent claim from "Server architecture and methods for persistently storing and serving event data" to plain old "Evil".
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
Nice. Let's just hide the data from the person its associated with, but allow everyone else to see/use it. I wish ChoicePoint had this option.
combine this with amazons one-click patent, and you have THE most innovative company in the industry,
thank you, amazon, you are truly a benchmark in technology progress.
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
Everytime something good is about to happen there will be somebody to take that away from us why ? why ? why ?
Think like a hacker, act like a hacker, but never become a hacker !
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but since disclosure in exchange for temporary monopoly is the fundamental principle of patents, isn't having an unpublished procedure rather one-sided?
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
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*]
Too lazy to create a sig...
Rockie nWood, caveman unfrozen from the depths of the Ice mountain 8 years ago. He attended law school ever since and successfully got in flow with our society. Recently, he threatened to sue amazon.com due "prior art". He claims he was using his cave walls as a "personal history tracker", and demands huge payback from amazon.com for each year since he did that, until they filled the patent.
Thanks, Amazon, for showing the world why the U.S. patent system is the best. Especially for software related 'inventions' and 'innovations'.
I'm submitting this comment via the soon-to-be-patented 1-click 'submit' button. Which allows to 'submit' things, in only 1 click! Wow!
Eureka Science News - automatically updated
Still not buying stuff from Amazon.com.
Once all evil in the world is patented, will there be any option but to be good? -- or will companies pay to license evil.
Does this mean that Amazon now should be considered to be spyware?
(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.
-- Gary Goldberg KA3ZYW 301/249-6501 AIM:OgGreeb Digital Marketing Inc., Bowie, MD
You can't handle the truth.
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
So now you can patent changing bits in a database...
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!
There is an interesting possibility here; I don't know whether it's applicable in the US today, but certainly the position has merit under various European data protection legislation.
Under the UK's Data Protection Acts, for example, a company holding personal information about an individual can normally be required to provide all of that information to the individual for a nominal fee. Moreover, they would have certain obligations to fix incorrect information, handle the information in a reasonably secure way, etc.
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. In other words, the fact that I cancelled my order with a particular company and have no other dealings with them, and after reading about their data handling practices I don't trust them to keep my credit card number safe, does not automatically entitle me to have the card number removed from their database. We need only look at recent events reported right here on Slashdot to see what happens when an organisation with lots of personal information held under imperfect security gets compromised.
Perhaps this sort of deception, followed by a couple of spectacular failures of security and successful lawsuits by people who'd asked for the information to be deleted and later found that it wasn't, will be the catalyst for fixing data protection legislation in many places. All a company should be allowed to keep if you ask for your information to be deleted and they have no current reason to hold it is your identity and a flag that says you don't want to have your information kept on their system.
At present, you would have to jump through all kinds of hoops to demonstrate to the data protection officials that there wasn't a valid current reason to hold your data. And that's valid as in "the organisation's data protection entry mentions it", not valid as in "they actually need it to have an effective relationship with you"; just check all the blatantly unnecessary information that Transport for London has in its entry if you don't appreciate the difference. :-(
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I stopped shopping at Amazon around 1999, when they "unilaterally changed" (permanently violated) their privacy policy to share my personal data "with anyone we damn well please", after I'd given it to them. I "updated" all my data to fakes, kept my account, and have tracked their agressive descent into personal copyright violation ever since. I use my "anonymized" account to shop there, then buy direct.
--
make install -not war
I think the title should be changed to "Company patents web logs."
This is a bit hush hush. But I feel I strange need to tell the world. My employer is tossing in the paper work to patent eating soup with a spoon.
From this page...
I presume this searching feature of A9 would require cookies and that sort of thing, which is probably disabled by private browsing anyway, but I nevertheless find it a disturbing feature.
It obviously is meant for data-mining purposes, just in the same way they use your past purchases to make suggestions for books or thinks you would like to buy. It could serve well in a search engine environment if they can find out which links people chose. "People who selected links like you also selected these...".
But from a privacy standpoint, it is horrible. They shouldn't have that kind of information linked to an account in which you are not anonymous, and they have your name, address, and credit card number. Who would use a search engine like that for general purpose searches? They are trying to achieve Wal-Mart style data mining without regard for privacy issues. This is so awful, I wouldn't be surprised if many stopped using Amazon.com simply out of protest. Anyone know the popular alternatives to Amazon.com?
Oh my god! I just found prior art! /var/log/meggases
.bash_history file!
My
And wait! What's this? It's my
And what's this in my Go menu? Why it's my 'History' function. Way to go Mozilla! You infringed on a patent before it was even filed. Wow! What will they think of next?
Wait, wait, I forgot.
At the US Patent office they grant patents in spite of trivial things like gross obviousness, originality and indeed patentability itself.
I'm convinced at this point that the higher ups in the USPTO are getting backhanders from the patent lobby.
May the Maths Be with you!
The questions I have are: Why did they want the patent application unpublished? What did/do they have to hide? What are they scared of? (Obvious prior art?) Or are there valid reasons for a patent application to be non-published?
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet;
A chrysanthemum by any other name would be easier to spell
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.
That is simply false. Searching for and applying non-patent literature is a matter of routine. Many supervisors require a list of relevant non-patent literature from their examiners regardless of whether or not it was used to reject claims.
Which does not touch the stuff that was never patented.
This also is simply false. In addition to a database of issued patents, there is also a database of published applications, including those which were eventually abandoned. In case you were referring to "stuff" for which an application was never submitted, that generally falls into two categories: stuff that isn't patentable under 35 USC 101 and stuff that was known and used before anybody thought about patenting it. The non-patentable stuff under 101 is often found in text books, journal papers, and other non-patent literature sources routinely used by the examiners. The other stuff is intrinsically more difficult - finding adequate disclosure of some commercial software that you've never heard of, with solid dates, is always going to be tough.
Also, a patent does not necessarily have to use much industry-standard language. You can make up your own terms for things. So searching might not even do that much good.
Technically this is true, but 35 USC 112, second paragraph, does draw a line in this regard. Additionally, the USPTO separates the patent examiners into rather small groups (usually 8-15 examiners) in specific technologies. This helps deal with obfuscated applications. The 35 USC 112 and the USPTO also grant the examiners authority to declare an application as basically incomprehensible and full of terminology so different from that normally used in that technology that the application is summarily rejected. That is NOT fun for an agent/attorney, because you run the risk of losing the filing date, must supply a complete replacement application, run the risk of having the replacement rejected for containing new information (rather than just a replacement), and unless you're a partner in the law firm, it's really not that funny around the water cooler.
Patent examiners cannot afford the time to do extensive searching outside of their own database. The patent office is a velvet sweatshop and a revenue center for the Executive Branch....
With all due respect, you haven't convinced me that you're qualified to make these kinds of statements.
Powell's World of Books (powells.com) has an EXCELLENT technical selection, takes up it's own building down the street from the main store. Sure it's a little bit more $ for the book (but not much), but they are much nicer people...
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Storing personal search histories on search engines had brief notoriety about five years ago, with numerous papers published about that time. It took Amazon three years to file a patent on other people's published idea? Boy, they are slow.
Maybe this is Amazon's way of asking to have people flood their servers with random searches in their name. As a result, the data would contain so much "noise" that amazon couldn't deduce anything from it.
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.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.