Slashdot Mirror
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 When filed back in 2003, Amazon asked the USPTO not to publish the application, but rescinded that request last May, presumably in anticipation of its filing for an international patent."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.
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but since disclosure in exchange for temporary monopoly is the fundamental principle of patents, isn't having an unpublished procedure rather one-sided?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.
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
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?
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.