Amazon.com, leading the way on innovation with blogging patents!
An electronic catalog system provides an interface for users to author and post pieces of content, referred to as "blurbs," for viewing by other users. The blurbs submitted by a particular author are made available for viewing in an author-specific blog (web log) format. Blurbs may also be obtained from external sources, such as from blogs hosted by various web sites. A personalized blurb selection component selects blurbs to present to users based on histories of catalog items selected by such users, and/or based on various other criteria. The blurbs selected for a particular user are presented within a personal log or "plog," which may be updated daily and will typically contain entries from many different authors. User feedback provided on specific blurbs is taken into consideration by the personalized blurb selection algorithms.
So basically each individual author may have a blog tied to their products, the users will be presented with blog posts ("blurgs"), Amazon.com may pull these blurbs from other web sites that they do not own (aggregation, not that's new...), the blog can be personalized by Amazon.com customers, group blogs on Amazon.com will be supported and users can *gasp* *drumroll* leave comments! This astonishing series of innovations is brought to you by Amazon.com, best known for their patented "One-Click" technology which allows customers to actually buy just one thing at a time, rather than make one large order.
Now, those of you who support the patent lobby so much, what good can come of this patent being enforced? Does this sound like a novel and innovative idea? If it does, then apparently you've never used the web pre-2000 because all of this technology was around, and in use in some form, back then. So what do we get here now, "idea integration patents," patents on slapping previously mundane technologies together in ways that probably would be obvious to a practitioner in the technical field, but not to a lawyer or a patent examiner?
MikeT, first of all, this is a published patent application that is pending and, in fact, has not even been examined yet. The filing date is August 13, 2003, so it remains to be seen whether the claims are patentable in view of prior art...