Amazon threatens Google
p2p news / p2pnet: There’s a new reason for the smile on Amazon’s face. As of yesterday, it could put Yahoo, Google and others “in the sights of Amazon.com’s lawyers,” says internetnews.com.
How come?
Amazon now owns three patents covering its purchase circles, search and consumer reviews and, “While Amazon.com’s patent police would go after Web publishers, not consumers, the review patent could put the kibosh on the social networking components of many search services,” says the story.
The first patent covers, “methods of forming circles and marketing to them, for example, by showing one person looking at a book detail page and who else in the circle has bought that book,” and the second, “a method of discovering and delivering as search results related products from multiple categories, such as books written by Steve Martin, as well as DVDs of movies in which he appeared”.
But, “The third patent is the real kicker,” says internetnews.com. “It covers methods for encouraging consumers to write reviews of items they’ve purchased by determining the optimal times to send them e-mails or reminders”.
In one embodiment, “the system sends consumers a message inviting them to write a review in a predetermined amount of time after the purchase. It’s a method widely used by online retailers, including Yahoo Shopping. The patent also covers the method of tracking who returns to rate products by asking them to click on a unique link in an e-mail.”
Amazon.com spokesman Craig Berman is quoted as saying he couldn’t speculate on whether the company would attempt to license its new intellectual property.
Not much.
See:-
internetnews.com – Amazon Gets Patents on Consumer Reviews, November 11, 2005
November 11th, 2005 at 11:22 pm
How about patenting the whole concept of putting words together to form sentences?
Or how about patenting the idea of putting an archive of past news stories on a web site?
In related news, I now own the patent on mixing red and blue to make purple…. I’ll be going door to door in my neighborhood to collect royalties on Monday.
Amazon, you greedy mother-fuckers, I will NEVER purchase anything from a company that is so skeevy as to abuse the patent system for anti-competitive purposes. Too bad the rest of the pleebs won’t care.
November 12th, 2005 at 2:43 am
This is so ridiculous its not even funny.
November 12th, 2005 at 3:59 am
How can the US issue patents on global internet technology anyway. There is not a word to describe how lame this is.
November 12th, 2005 at 4:20 am
Whatever happend to “GoogleZon”?
November 12th, 2005 at 5:21 am
You know societies and civilisations have lifespans. They’re “born” “grow” and “die”. You only need to look at the roman empire for one example. Ok there are ppl still living in Rome (ie the italians) but that empire and civilisation as such, is long gone.
I’m of the opinion that we are all watching the civilisation that is currently called the usa, “die”. I am wondering where the barbarians will come from though, and how long it will take them before a new civilisation rises to replace it.
It makes me glad that Oz is on the far side, and other hemisphere of the world from the usa. Perhaps we’ll last a bit longer.
November 15th, 2005 at 1:50 am
I’m with you on that. I’m avoiding Amazon until this is sorted out.
This is the web man. Did they invent HTML? Do they pay for it? Is every single idea of theres unique? What about selling books? What about using a username and password?
I shake my head at the music industry which is run by accountants and lawyers, but it is not the only industry.
November 15th, 2005 at 1:53 am
Problem is that distance doesn’t matter any more.
The ‘barbarians’ are the 800,000 chinese engineering graduates and the 1 million Chinese business graduates that hit the streets each year.
The USA is definitely on the downhill slope. My only question is will it go quietly like the UK did, or will it go kicking and screaming.
MJL – also in Oz.