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Amazon Patents Including a String at End of a URL

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the why-didn't-i-think-of-that-oh-wait dept.

theodp writes "On Tuesday, Amazon search subsidiary A9.com was awarded U.S. patent no. 7,287,042 for 'including a search string at the end of a URL without any special formatting.' In the Summary of the Invention, it's explained that 'a user wishing to search for 'San Francisco Hotels' may do by simply accessing the URL www.domain_name/San Francisco Hotels, where domain_name is a domain name associated with the web site system.' Here's the flowchart that helped cinch the deal."

5 of 306 comments (clear)

  1. Wha? by shinma · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm not sure they even LOOK at patent applications anymore.

    --
    Shinma
  2. Can you say mod_rewrite? by Se7enLC · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How is this not an obvious use of apache mod_rewrite??

  3. Re:Patent Filed Date by jc42 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Filed: August 23, 2004

    Umm, that was more than a decade after the published HTTP standards included the PATH_INFO environment variable, which gives the program everything past the file pathname portion of a URL. This was essentially defined as a string that the invoked CGI program would interpret however it wishes. If this doesn't qualify as "prior art", what would? Note that the last-updated timestamps on these specs are in 1995 and 1996.

    So Amazon is merely patenting a part of NCSA's published HTTP CGI-invocation standard.

    This mostly shows that the patent examiners are totally ignorant of HTML and related Web standards, and are thus unqualified to say anything about the patent application.

    --
    Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
  4. Re:Patent Filed Date by Merk · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Primary Examiner: Kim; Chong H

    I recommend that Kim, Chong H be fired.

  5. Wrong approach by tamtaradei · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You cannot fix procedural problems by simply blaming the unfortunate person who was executing the procedure. The entire patent system is flawed - it is not a random failure, it is just an outcome of an incorrect system.

    Unless it was supposed to work that way - but then why pay anyone for examining the patents before they are filed? Maybe the Patent Office should just be a kind of notary who only records when someone came up with the idea, just to give him or her the legal basis for later defending his or her rights, but does not examine whether the idea is original.