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Amazon Patents User Viewing Histories
Chris Cleveland writes "Yet another astounding patent from the USPTO. I was browsing the patent database, and discovered that Amazon received a patent today on using customer viewing histories to generate recommendations. If a customer views product A, and then later views product B, and you use that to infer a relationship between A and B, then you've infringed on this patent. This patent is a continuation of an earlier patent (#6,317,722) on using shopping carts to generate recommendations. When will this stupidity end?"
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
A. One, against BN.com
... software patent?
why doesn't slashdot print a story for every google or transmeta or
Some patents filed are pretty general and can be summed up in a few words like "using customer viewing histories to generate recommendations." This particular patent, however, is not all that general and is actually very detailed, yet broad.
It details not only the weighting system used to generate the recommendations (recently purchased + highly rated = higher weight), in the same category, but in other store areas as well. It weights differently based upon whether an item is placed in the cart, searched for, placed on the wish list, bid on in online auction(?), purchased as a gift, or merely favorably reviewed.
So, Amazon is basically saving their customer's viewing/browsing tendencies as data. Now, they've patented the usage of this data to generate more sales. It seems like a good idea to me.
and now back to the fallout shelter...
I actually have a direct example of prior art that pre-dates this patent by over 2 years. Back in 1999, whilst working with Broadvision in both the UK and US, I was involved in a number of projects that implemented the exact method described in the patent.
Getting this absurd patent overthrown would be absolute child's play for anyone familiar with mapping taxonomy systems to observation logging and user ratings, which were common practice for anyone using systems such as Broadvision back in the late 90s.
At the time the patent was filed, it was extremely uncommon for systems to make automatic recommendations based solely on the behavior of users. When I did my work at Alexa Internet (which was acquired by Amazon) in the late 90s, I had to solve a number of issues which had not been dealt with, both from an engineering perspective and from a quality of results perspective -- few companies, and no academic researchers that I am aware of -- had both the amount of data and the technical talent required to process it in order to test and refine recommendation systems based on transactional information.
My work in this area became Amazon's "customers who shopped for X also shopped for Y feature." Greg Linden, the first name on this patent, is now doing interesting recommendation work with his site Findory.
--Pat / zippy@cs.brandeis.edu / blog / pics.
Welcome to the real world and the economic engine that is capitalism.
The world you live in has nothing to do with capitalism anymore.
Capitalism was, MAYBE, present during 1950-60's, but what people are experiencing now is something so deformed it needs a new name.
I have YET to purchase a single thing from Amason. Their prices (especially on nerd-type books) aren't that good anyway. I get mine from Nerdbooks.com. The services is always very good, and prices are outstanding.
Prices aside, I will NOT support a company that continues to rape the meaning of the word "innovation" by patenting rediculously obvious methods.
Last time I heard, patent application was around $10k per country and around $100k for worldwide filing.
Filing a patent in any country prevents anyone else from filing the same patent in all others but only provides legal enforcement in the countries where the patent was was filed. In most cases, inventors can file in other countries as necessary to extend legal protection but doing it incrementally can quickly cost more than an international filing.
(This is what I was told at a conference about a year or two ago.)
tough tarts, all amazon has to do is claim prior art and that company can sit and spin. No need to get your own patent on it.
.GIF format on the WWW, and had legitimate reason to argue against Unisys's claim to own the patent due to the doctrine of equivalents applying to essentially everything.
;) And Nokia, and Ebay, American Eagle, etc.
I know a patent lawyer that would disagree, and actually proposes "patent first" on items in order to protect companies from getting burned. In fact, he worked with several mid-size companies when Unisys went nutty. Several of these companies were the first to use the
This patent was filed so amazon could prevent competition from using this "technology". It's got nothing to do with protecting itself from lawsuits and everything to do with amazon reserving the right to sue others.
He works for Amazon.