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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."

1 of 306 comments (clear)

  1. A Modest Proposal. by Ancient_Hacker · · Score: -1, Offtopic
    How's about the industry teporarily stop trying to patent crap and instead focus on:

    (1) Adobe works on making Acrobat less than a huge PITA.

    (2) Apple fix QuickTime's TIFF viewer so it works on the images at the US Patent office site? Only been broken for three years or so.

    (3) The other free TIFF viewers fix their manifold flaws and foibles regarding speed, imaging, scaling, printing, etc.

    just a Modest Proposal.