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?"

Comments

Isn't this just a staple of old fashioned retail?

[jmp_nyc]

You walk into your neighborhood shop. The proprietor knows you and your purchasing history. Upon seeing you, you're greeted with a suggestion of things you might want to purchase based on your previous purchases and the buying patterns of other regular customers with similar preferences. This has been going on more or less since the creation of a currency based purchasing system. All Amazon did was create an algorithm to automate the process.

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

Re:Wait

[The Snowman]

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.

Re:When will this stupidity end?

[LordBodak]

Research? The problem with Amazon's patents (and 95% of other software patents nowadays) is that they don't research to come up with these things, they take basic foundations of e-commerce and traditional retailing that have been in use for years, if not decades, and then patent them.

What happened to prior art?

Re:End?

[NegativeOneUserID]

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.

Re:Patents are stupid.

[SquarePants]

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.

Using your scenario,any solution at which a bunch of programmers could independently arrive would, under most circumstances, be "obvious" and therefore not patentable. The problem is not the patent laws, it is the implementation.

There aren't sufficient examiners skilled in the art of software programming to determine in most cases when something is obvious. Those examiners who are skilled are overwhelmed and can only do a very cursory job of searching in the time alloted to examine every application. Most of the time, the only search done is of patent prior art which in the field of software is sparse.

As much as I hate saying this, this is one of those problems that does require money being thrown at it in order to solve. We need to hire more and better examiners. We need to pay the skilled examiners better to retain them.

That is not to say that the USPTO does not have other problems. But lack of funding is certainly one of the biggest. Of course, the reason for this is that nobody in aposition to do something about this really has any incentive to do so.

Re:End?

[The_Quinn]

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?".

Re:End?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:End?

[nostrademons]

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.