By Matthew Broersma, 10 March 2005 09:05
NEWS
Amazon.com has been granted a US patent on "Methods and systems of assisting users in purchasing items", including the use of gift-buying habits to determine the age, gender and birth date of gift recipients, according to a US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) filing on Tuesday.
The patent concerns inferring information about gift recipients and using that information to suggest appropriate items and services, such as birthday or Valentine's Day reminders and age- and gender-appropriate gifts. "For example, if the purchased toy is a dress for a doll, it may be inferred that the recipient is a girl," the patent states.
"The gender information may be used in determining which gift wrapping colours and patterns should be suggested when the item is being purchased as a gift. For example, if it is inferred that the recipient is a girl, pink or pastel coloured gift wrapping may be suggested first."
Websites using such techniques may now be compelled to pay Amazon a licence fee, at least in the US. Patents on pure software and business processes (or the idea of writing software that supposes girls may like dolls) are currently not enforceable in Europe, but a draft directive on the "patentability of computer-implemented inventions" now making its way through the European Parliament could remove most restrictions, the directive's opponents claim.
United States Patent number 6,865,546 was issued to an Amazon.com researcher on Tuesday. Much of the patent's descriptions relate to how a website can determine the age and birth date of birthday gift recipients. For example, if a toy appropriate for a two-year-old is purchased one year, and a toy appropriate for a three-year-old is purchased a year later, the site can guess that this is a gift for a three-year-old. The site can use this information to automatically provide services such as birthday reminders, the filing says.
Under conventional systems, "in order to receive birthday reminders, the customer has to actively provide the date of the birthday to the merchant," the filing says. "Many customers will not take the time to provide such birth dates, and so are deprived of receiving reminders."
Amazon's patent grants it a monopoly on many data-mining techniques applied to identifying when a purchase is a gift, and what sort of gift it is. "If the item being ordered is perfume, and the date is one week before Valentine's Day, it may be inferred that the perfume is being purchased as a gift," the filing states. If a user chooses to send a message with a gift, the system can parse the message for "key words, such as birthday or anniversary" and infer the type of event associated with the gift, the patent states.
Last month the USPTO published Amazon's application for a patent on "Server architecture and methods for persistently storing and serving event data", which describes the "personal search history" feature of Amazon's A9 search service. Amazon has also applied for a European patent on this feature.
Matt Broersma writes for ZDNet UK.
Comments
There are 8 comments. Join the discussion
1. anonymous
Get me off this crazy planet!
2. Stuart Vine
You'd better hurry before NASA patents extra-orbital transportation facilities....
3. Rob
I've just applied for a patent in the US for picking your nose, so you'd all better stop picking or start getting your wallets out.
I'm thinking of also patenting "wiping of bum", so again either pay up, don't go(EVER!) or just be smelly.
4. anonymous
Why bother with all these airy-fairy patents. Why not just go for the "Patent to use logic in order to decide something". I guess Mr Spock must have that one sewn up though.
5. Stuart Fawcett
Maybe PI's should patent how to solve crimes then charge the government for using that technique.
Mmmm, intelligence could totally stifle human development.
6. anonymous
It would be hilarious to see them try to defend this patent. I would doubt that their patent had anything like the scope that this article suggests.
7. Cristian Nicola
Another victory against freedom ... Patents like this are the reasons why i keep trying to convince everyone around that the concept of "public inventions" should be used. The idea is very simple: once an idea is in wide spread use there should be NO way for an institution/individual to patent it. It is in the best interest of the consumers - which then would be assured they would get the best service on the interest of best service rather than the best service to fit the commercial needs of some company.
Patents like this make the will to innovate to dissapear even before trying to build something ...
The idea of patents and copyright was to protect individuals that innovate against entities (either individuals or companies) that are looking only for commercial advantages. The present US system is ONLY protecting largest commercial-advantage-seekers against innovators.
Want a system that really works? Force patents to ONLY protect against the ones that that more financial advantage than the original owner. This would prevent large companies to infringe patents of smallest companies, while it would let the small fish have the freedom to search for new things - not having to worry that one day they will receive a letter for they have infringed some patent of mr very large corporation who has nothing better to do than to patent silly things.
8. h c grant
The real problem is that Amazon could use its financial muscle to attack others using simular obvious techniques. It costs money to defend yourself and hence the patent and the law are being used as a threat to supress competition. Remember that the EC has just again put forward proposals for a simular EU patent law. So EMail your Euro MP a reference to this and other silicon.com pages on software patents to remind them of the stupidity of such law and the harm it would do the the EU software community . I'm suprised that the US , the home of individualism and freedom - suposedly - should harm themselves in this way.