Amazon Takes
Pikachu To The Patent Office
from the it's-not-"would-be-nice-to-catch-them-all"
dept.
theodp
writes "On Tuesday, Amazon was awarded a patent for
Search Query Autocompletion. From the Summary of the
Invention--'For example, if Pokemon toys are currently the best
selling or most-frequently-searched-for items within the database,
the term POKEMON may be
suggested whenever a user enters the letters "PO," even though many
hundreds of other items in the database may start with "PO.'"
See, Amazon practices the mantra "Gotta catch 'em all" with
patents.
Is this real! How can every fundamental database programming
technique that has been in existence for years be co-opted by
Amazon simply becuase they have realized that the Web is actually a
Database (albeit distributed and free form in nature today, and
obvioulsy semnatic in the future).