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Amazon Patents Including a String at End of a URL
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."
Isn't there a Drupal module that already does this?
-Myke
I'm willing to grant that the patents reviwers are probably too overloaded to be able to thoroughly search, or even to be all that savvy on all matters technical... But there really needs to be a better system for determining prior art - a way for them to put up a website saying: "hey, has anyone ever thought of using a pre-definined character in a url before?"
And then when that server crashed under the deluge they'd know that someone probably had.
It doesn't help that companies actually encourage their staff (this is a mobile phone company I'm referring to) _not_ to check for themselves before submitting a patent application. The reasoning was somethign along the lines of: if you know prior art exists then we can't legally make the submission, but if you don't know then we just might get the patent.
"And that solves the mystery of the missing ring" - Bender
Hmmm... with your thinking process that goes: "I've never seen this. It's probably patentable!", you could have a good future working at the USPTO. Have you thought about applying for a position there?
Given that I believe most early applications had to have it after a ? and the straight text is a fairly new thing, they might have done it early enough to be the first to do it.
Not early enough. I have prior art in 2003... because my boss wanted exactly this sort of behavior. ISAPI extensions in C++. This was one of my first bits of web development - and if it was obvious to me then... well... I'd hardly call it novel. He did not want to type a ? or add in any search=... parameters. Just parse the url and use whatever text was there as the search string.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
Technology tips and tricks.
It makes me wonder if someone can just patent filing a patent and just make the system grind to a halt.
Sorry... Does anything more need to be said?
OK, lets talk inflation.
Inflation of the money supply, inflation of grades, inflation of patent numbers, inflation of job titles...
It's really all the same thing. The more there is of something the less any individual item is worth. Money, grades, patents. Yet the vast majority seem to have some significant difficulty with that concept. More is better than less. Thing is, you don't actually have more, you have less but with a bigger number. Interesting. I wonder if there's a level of I.Q. where people simply can't understand that concept... Maybe they'll be happy when they earn a zillionty dollars per year each, have a PhD and are titled "Captain of the World".
By creating thousands, tens of thousands of patents you aren't actually producing anything of value, you're simply throwing doubt on the value of all patents.
Real value is relatively unrelated to inflation. The economy only grows for real (real stuff like chairs, tables, cars) at a couple of percent a year. Real academic achievement is still hard, only a small proportion are up to it and only a small number of patents are really innovative and being captain of the world doesn't help much if you are still sweeping streets.
Essentially, inflation is deceit. People who inflate are at the very best, liars and more usually swindlers planning fraud.
Deleted
Has amazon been using this technique for more than a decade?
MABASPLOOM!
"Method for single-click acquisition of condiment stains on printed material"?
When you add enough legal bullshit wording, it's not hard to fool people into taking it seriously.
MacUpdate's had this for years.
Example: http://www.macupdate.com/adobe will trigger a search for Adobe software.