J-Soft Blog

Wednesday, May 04, 2005

Aparrantly this is a patentable invention. It's vague enough to apply to several existing technologies, none of which are created by Amazon(the holder of the patent for the alleged invention)

A method and system for allowing users of different web pages to exchange information. The information exchange system identifies groups of related web pages and maintains a database of user-supplied information for each group of related web pages. When a user accesses a web page, the information exchange often displays in a separate area the information associated with the group of related web pages. Also, the information exchange system allows the user to enter information that will be displayed to other users who access related web pages.

Even the detailed description is awfully general and applicable to widely used applications such as RSS aggregators, weblog trackbacks or comment systems(I better lawyer up). Parts of it even seem to describe hyperlinks. Has Amazon patented the web?

With software "inventions" being so vague, its impossible for software developers not to trip over the tangled web of existing "inventions" while creating original software. Software by its nature should not be patentable.
posted by Jesse at 11:42 PM #