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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?"
The problem is that the algorithm is obvious to anyone who understands the process, and the process is too well known to be subject to a patent. (Even so, that patent would have expired sometime well before the USPTO was created.)
I suppose if Amazon can't put well run stores out of business by taking all their customers away, they can patent the concept of good retail instead...
-JMP
this has been going on for years. These same ideas are used in amaroK, on Audioscrobbler, all over the place. How can they patent something that's been in use for a long time and is probably already patented?
I am sure there is prior art all over the place. For example, most online retailers have blurbs saying "customers who bought this product also bought these..." and give a list. This is the exact same thing done in aggregate, and I am sure someone will use it to invalidate this dumb patent.
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
What happened to prior art?
LordBodak's journal.
When you realise that democracy is just a veneer over a system where big business writes the rules and calls the shots.
When this knowledge makes you get out of your complacent "everything for the best in this, the best of all possible worlds" attitude and makes you start organising.
When the revolution comes.
Patents are usually discussed in the context of someone "stealing" an idea from the long suffering lone inventor that devoted his life to creating this one brilliant idea, blah blah blah.
But in the majority of cases in software, patents effect independent invention. Get a dozen sharp programmers together, give them all a hard problem to work on, and a bunch of them will come up with solutions that would probably be patentable, and be similar enough that the first programmer to file the patent could sue the others for patent infringement.
Why should society reward that? What benefit does it bring? It doesn't help bring more, better, or cheaper products to market. Those all come from competition, not arbitrary monopolies. The programmer that filed the patent didn't work any harder because a patent might be available, solving the problem was his job and he had to do it anyway. Getting a patent is uncorrelated to any positive attributes, and just serves to allow either money or wasted effort to be extorted from generally unsuspecting and innocent people or companies.
Yes, it is a legal tool that may help you against your competitors, but I'll have no part of it. Its basically mugging someone.
- JC
and I am sure someone will use it to invalidate this dumb patent.
How optimistic of you. While you are making predictions, care to predict who exactly is going to do this? I have a prediction of my own: this patent will stand and the other uses of the concept (like audioscrobbler) will be sued into submission. Or maybe just disappear even before getting sued. I think a well-drafted warning letter will suffice.
For example, most online retailers have blurbs saying "customers who bought this product also bought these..." and give a list.
Prior art is based on the date of the application, not the date the patent is granted. You will have to dig a bit deeper than that.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
You are, of course, right...
But let me pose this question.
Why should a business practice that has been around for thousands of years be deserving of a patent simply because the retailer in question operates a different type of store? Mom & Pop shops have been making suggestions to customers based on past shopping habits forever.
Why does attaching the word "Internet" suddenly make this a new and novel idea?
No, it will not ever be over. Stupidity will always exist. As long as there has been patents and as long as there will be patents there will be stupidity. Stupidity will always be in any human endeavor.
When the corporate takeover of the government ends. The USPTO is acting in the interest of the technology industry, not the public. Same with the FDA. The FDA sees pharmaceutical companies as clients -- it doesn't even know it's supposed to be a regulatory agency. OSHA is basically asleep. Until public campaigns are financed by public dollars, the situation will only get worse.
I'm sorry but YOU'RE dead wrong.
I know that the rules read that way on paper, but it doesn't take too much intelligence to look at the patents that they've been granting lately to realize that "the rules" mean very, very little to a patent examiner.
What's really funny is that some web engineer probably got a $10 check and a certificate of appreciation for engineering the site that led to the patent - and he's probably scratching his head saying "huh?".
Mine is Good
On the one hand, some number of the tech-savy get (justifiably) upset over Amazon patenting the trivial. On the other hand, Jeff Bezos is a Web 2.0 darling, and Amazon Web APIs and so Hot and Cool and Hip and Now, so many of these same geeks cannot act as if Amazon can do no wrong.
The original Amazon patent and boycott uproar clearly had *nil* effect, and I expect there to now be a deafening silence from most of those who really should know better.
Java is the blue pill
Choose the red pill
This should be modded funny right? Apparently you and the people who modded this up do not understand patents.
If you are amazon and you start doing something, then some company comes along after the fact and patents that... 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.
And if it wasn't after the fact, if this nameless company had already patented what amazon was doing, then guess what? Amazon's patent is invalid and they need to license this thing from this nameless company who owns the patent.
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.
I'm sorry, but if it was so obvious then why wasn't it on some other site before? It's just silly to say that something is obvious after the fact. The truely innovative thing about Amazon's mechanism for recommending things is that they show you items that people who bought the item you are currently looking at also bought. Again, that's obvious, but no-one else did it before Amazon did and as soon as Amazon starting doing it everyone else starting copying it.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Lawsuits are expensive, even if they're dismissed on prior art grounds. Many companies patent every random bit of technology as a deterrent, so that they can say "If you sue us, we'll find something that you're infringing and sue you back to the stone age." It's like mutually-assured-destruction from the cold war days. Saves on legal bills for everyone.