Amazon Slaps Orbitz and Avis With Patent Lawsuit

theodp writes "Amazon has sued Cendant for allegedly infringing four patents covering electronic commerce at its Orbitz, Avis and other Web sites. Cendant, the biggest U.S. provider of travel and real-estate services, knew 'or should have known' it infringed when using the tools to secure credit-card transactions, handle customer referrals and manage data, according to the lawsuit filed June 22 in federal court in Seattle. Amazon itself was sued by Cendant last year for patent infringement over its recommendation technology. So much for five years of Amazon patent reform."

Comments

Re:Defensive lawsuit

[Jeffrey Baker]

I can't seem to scrape together a lot of pity for Cendant here, either. Cendant's patent is for "System and Method for Providing Recommendation of Goods or Services Based on Recorded Purchasing History." Doesn't anyone remember FireFly circa 1996 and subsequently bought and murdered by Microsoft? The entire point of FireFly was to recommend stuff based on how well you liked or disliked records. In fact, it's possible that Cendant's technology shares a common ancestor with FireFly's: Chris Bergh, a technologist at FireFly and NetMarket.

As far as I am concerned, Cendant drew its sword and now they cannot avoid battle. Tough shit for them.

UPDATE: Details on Amazon's Patent Lawsuit

[theodp]

According to documents filed in the case by Preston Gates & Ellis (yep, Bill G's dad!), Amazon is joined in the lawsuit by A9.com in demanding injunctive relief and unspecified triple damages for "irreparable injury and damages" as a result of Cendant's infringement of the following patents:

Secure method and system for communicating a list of credit card numbers over a non-secure network (5,715,399), which is held by Bezos and covers displaying "the last N digits of the credit card number, where N is an integer,"

Internet-based customer referral system (6,029,141), which is also held by Bezos and covers Amazon's affiliate program,

Electronic commerce using multiple roles (6,629,079), which covers the use of "multiple electronic shopping carts," and

Navigating within a body of data using one of a number of alternative browse graphs (6,625,609), which describes how one might sell "a Pez candy dispenser in the shape of the Marvin the Martian."

BTW, Bezos' '399 patent was the subject of a curious 2001 Prior Art contest run by the Bezos-funded BountyQuest - ties to Bezos were never disclosed and the contest results were never revealed.