unfortunately, it's not the same thing and if there is no proof that others did the embedding of the "coupon code" within the link, then that's why they got the patent approved.

there are certainly ways to work around this patent.. .. folks like amazon can't just change their affiliate program mechanism now since they are on the hook for past infringement.

those those being sued, could change the way the affiliate link is handled, but then there will just be another patent troll that says they have "the" patent on affiliate programs (and there are several of them on the books).


Fight the sigh!

crack dealers have been piecing off little rocks to smoke to fiends for referring sales ever since the 80's crack fever?

The power of GFY.

do they have a patent on the Sad Banana?

http://www.hornybloggers.com/sadbanana.gif

Serge is impressive.

At anyrate.

Mozilla and Netscape's Cookie API had already defined the principal foundations for referral based sales. THough the API did not address ecomerce specifically but it did certainly describe exact applications just because ecommerce would be factor is irrelevant.

The factor is a matter of carrying unique identifyers. WHich is why COOKIES were invented in the first place by the US government and Netscape.


Back in the day and to this day there are two direct methods.

1 Method is cookie based.
2 is unique session ID's.

Cookie based tracking was rampant and one can most certainly look to Netscapes Cookie API where it completely describes the concept in a very open manor.

I do not see that this "Patent" would be any threat whats so ever and will be laughed out of a court room with great ease.
My initial concepts were founded in not only Unique Session ID's carrying an affiliate number in cookies but also included cookie reference on referred click through by domain.

My inital concepts were to have the cookie referr to the URL referred and not the AFF ID number.

Both methods worked and worked well.

That is REALLY stupid, good luck getting money for a concept that is old as dirt. I think they moved way too late now they look like jack asses.

Dont fucken forget the fact that NETSCAPE was a government entity in the early day.

That Odd ball company are the guys that most probably founded the first concepts of Unique identifyers on the internet.

The World Wide Web was designed as a militaristic defense under the concept that no matter what was blown up in a post nuke era the internet and its users would manage to communicate. It was devised as an intelligence instrument and this intelligence instrument relied on unique identifyers to track information.


So in essence FTP get ahild of old Netscape guys, I know a few of them. One of them owns a coffee Shop in SF he went by the name LWZ. The originator of Mozilla. He can easily describe the concepts of unique tracking on the internet.

Correction LZW was his handle.
Old Netscape people would describe him as the only guy that wore black everyday, listened to Morrisy and painted himself white during board meetings.

Infact in old Compiles of Netscape 1.0 you can find his Easter Eggs.

Quite an extreme character but very intense and intelligent.

Here is an actual document from 1995.

http://wp.netscape.com/newsref/std/cookie_spec.html

Well not exactly but Again look at Netscape or get ahold of them they may have tons of archival stuff.

I invented the use of arm nerves to transmit signals from the brain to the hands to access internet content. Think I can get something out of that?

If memory serves me correctly...

If the government releases something for public use such as the Internet ( In this case ) If Netscape derived the fundamentals to unique identifyers that bizzar patent claim is Bye Bye.
But then I am a guy that laughed when Amazon touted its one click purchase blitz.


What a joke.

what about what i do with my hands AFTER said content is acquired?

http://www.blooberry.com/indexdot/history/netscape.htm

also look at w3c foundation.

i believe you would then be violating one of microsoft's patents about using the body as a conduit for signals between devices.. that have a touch connection through the body.. really, i read it a while back.


Fight the simpsons already thought of that!

um.. no.

Arpanet which then later evolved to the internet, was designed to not have a central point of failure.

the World wide web was created by Tim Berners-Lee to allow the interexchange of information across distances in an interconnecting "web" manner. he didn't file a patent for his invention because he wanted everyone to share in its growth.. in hindsight, he should have patented it and just not enforce it except to stop idiots from patenting things that shouldn't be granted.


Fight the history lesson!

Umm Yes.


The global Internet's progenitor was the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) of the U.S. Department of Defense. This is an important fact to remember, because the support and style of management by ARPA was crucial to the success of ARPANET. As the Internet develops and the struggle over the role the Internet plays unfolds, it will be important to remember how the network developed and the culture that it was connected with. (As a facilitator of communication, the culture of the Net is an important feature to acknowledge.)

http://www.dei.isep.ipp.pt/docs/arpa-Introduc.html

Here is some more:
http://geekphilosopher.com/MainPage/WebBrowserWars.htm

Here is a timeline:

http://www.internetvalley.com/archiv...timeline-1.htm

The originator of mozilla? Do you mean Mosaic? And that was Marc Andreesen back in the days at U of Illinois champaigne-urbana. I remember using Mosaic back in 1993...wasn't much to connect to and the web pages look so rinky-dink compared to what people like alienq do today.. but much nicer than gopher, veronica, WAIS, etc.

Cookie sessions have nothing to do with the affiliate program patent. Subsequent patents by other people may have used cookies for tracking purposes.. but they first relied on a link from one website to another that contains some kind of identifying marker.

The argument that Amazon would need to make is that passing of identifiers was a normal HTTP GET function, that the receiving end was a CGI script that programmatically could do what you want.. ie. redirect, keep stat counts etc..... the uphill legal battle is to explain how the patent was "non-obvious" ... but if no one can demonstrate that the use of an identifying code in a URL that was intended to track clickthrus from another website, then it shows that this patent was unique and novel, and would be the foundation patent for which all affiliate programs and patents would have to pay licensing to.

The U.S. patent system grants patents for the "first to file".... so yeah, it does suck, and exposes a major flaw of patents in hi-tech that people around the world could have been developing similar ideas, but if you can't find published facts, then the patent stands and you get nailed with patent infringement.


Fight the patent!

Ahh so they went the unique session ID way.
There are MANY veritable ways to do that as well.

Well...
Thats different.

The bit about Andreeson, the guy I am talkin about reported to Andresson.
They worked together on Mosaic.

So I stand corrected on that:)

the World Wide Web is not the internet... the HTTP protocols ride ontop of the internet backbone. FTP, WAIS, etc protocols ride ontop of the internet, accessing via TCP/IP. The internet was around before WWW, which popped up commercially around 1994, whereas the internet/arpanet have been around for much longer.


Fight the history lesson!

Well what I am trying to describe though is that to break that Patent one has to look at the mechanics of original concepts that were never intended in application of ecommerce.

Goto remember that Ecommerce did not create the internet. The internet was founded off principals of government Computer Scientists establishing means of communications and its needs within the medium. This includes unique identifyers and session ID's. The concepts were open by standard of PC scripting in the computer sciences community in this case CGI.

Those elements they devised is where ecommerce was built from just because a dollar sign in real world application comes into the equation is irrelevant. The methodology was already founded by the government.

there should be a law against people waiting for years to cash in on their patents.

Here check this out to FTP:
http://webdevelopersjournal.com/arti..._servlets.html

Here is some interesting stuff from CERN in 1994:
http://www94.web.cern.ch/WWW94/PrelimProcs.html
Bottom of page:


Keywords: business, home use
Title: Changing your Business Culture with Mosaic (Abstract)
Author: Ray Anderson
Institute:IXI/SCO
PostScript, Size: 23621, Printed: 1 page

Funny that the government made it so that Patents can be transferred.

Kinda a booty ruling.

FTP - you know I'm doing random searches to see what I can find.
http://www.htdig.org/mail/2000/03/03...sion+ids&hl=en
Here they mention Apache servers automatically attaching the session id to the url if htdig doesn't accept cookies - depending on when Apache started doing that & if it kept track of who/what or if it used a CGI script - would that not prove that it was not a miraculous discovery?
*posts are from year 2000 but perhaps Apache was before that*

soon you'll be able to buy "stocks" for enforceable patents :1orglaugh

Taken from another board:
Google being sue for $5B

When did Adultcheck start?

http://IPalert.com is a useful tool for inventors tracking their inventions or those of others :winkwink:


have a great new year's :thumbsup

evidence such as this could prove that the patent was "non-obvious", that anyone "skilled in the arts" could see that other things were going around that would naturally have led to this invention.

amazon is at the early stages, somewhat like declaratory judgement, that if they can show the judge that (adult) websites were embedding an identifier in the URL to track clickthrus for commissions, etc.. then this case can get closed.

If amazon cannot come up with a silver bullet by the end of january, then it will have to go to court, where they will bring in expert witnesses, testimony, and evidence such as what you have been finding.. but that means a drawn-out legal process.

If the defendants against Acacia had this same opportunity, they probably could have nipped acacia right from the beginning.. we found some great prior art of digital video being used on BBS way before the Acacia patent.. but in the Acacia patent case, it went through Markman Hearings, etc,etc...which drew this thing out over 3 years.

To better focus people's time in searching, there has to be a clear usage of an identifier, embeded within the URL that would be used for affiliates.

anything other than the above focus, is something that the defense attorneys probably already found, or not useful to them at this stage of the game unless there is specifically the demonstrated use of an affiliate link.

many thanks for to everyone jumping in to find the prior art. this patent really is an important one to unravel.... if adult industry use of affiliate links can't be found prior to sep 1995, then it doesn't look good for everyone.

I feel that this patent is "obvious" due to CGI programming on webservers back at that time, that would easily lead to affiliate marketing integration.




Fight the duhhhhh!

you mean stock ACTG = Acacia ?
:1orglaugh


Fight the patent day traders!

Thanks for the heads up.

Bump for the nuisance patent attornies.

History of the internet revealed!

Keeping this one alive.

This is ridiculous. The Internet itself is infringing on this patent:

This is even broader than Bezos' unenforceable patent attempt. It seems to focus no more sharply than "continuity of data association" -- Forget about it -- :thumbsup

Tim O'Reilly said it well in 2000. I think it still sounds good today:

"

I also want to say that a patent [like this] is a slap in the face of Tim Berners-Lee and all of the other pioneers who created the opportunity that Amazon has done such a good job of exploiting. Amazon wouldn't have existed without the generosity of people like Tim, who made legitimate, far-reaching inventions, and put them out into the public domain for all to build upon. Anyone who puts a small gloss on this fundamental technology, calls it proprietary, and then tries to keep others from building further on it, is a thief. The gift was given to all of us, and anyone who tries to make it their own is stealing our patrimony.

Patents like this are also incredibly short-sighted! The web has exploded because it was an open platform that sparked countless innovations by users. Fence in that platform, and who knows what opportunities will never come to light?

I urge Amazon to give up on this patent. I am confident that it will eventually be overturned in any case... more

"

The Web has been developed under a certain set of informal groundrules, where imitation was the sincerest form of flattery. Those rules are under attack, as companies decide the Web is "good enough" and now they are going to change the rules under which it developed, and stop others from copying them. We have to strike now, before exclusionary and proprietary approaches become accepted practice.

At the end of the day, a culture is ruled not just by its laws but by its social norms. The social norms of the Internet and of the Open Source community, which have proven so productive in the development of the Web, need to be recognized, honored, and upheld. The public relations cost of violating those norms needs to be high...more

2hp

there is already re-exam requests accepted by Patent Office over the 1-click patent.... as prior art for it has been submitted.

still nothing solid yet from the adult biz about affiliate programs before sept 1995.



Fight the still looking!

I am busy with some pro-bono work for a related good cause today, Brandon. If you feel there is time enough to wait, let's have an exhaustive chat about this in LV. Though I am laboring with some heavy ideological boulders today, I am always looking out for the odd smooth stone, by heel or toe, to which I might give a friendly tap, nudge or bump as I work.

2 Chronicles 32:5

as people get hip to the value of intellectual property portfolio's and wish to create or acquire their own, they will have incredible benefits from using the Patent & Trademark Watcher at http://IPalert.com

at http://IPalert.com you can sit back and watch a movie on the front page and see the simplicity of the interface....


we use it and we see a lot of folks in our industry are applying for patents btw. you might as well do a 30 day trial of the patent and trademark watcher at http://IPalert.com and also utilize the http://PDDW.com Pending Delete Domains Watcher, as the use of both will increase your knowledge base and protect your trademarks, plus much, much, more........

new years bump


Fight the patent trolls!