Affiliate Patent
A company, BTG, has acquired a "patent they claim" is the basis of all affiliate programs on the eb. "The patents cover the transmission of the URL (web address) of one site to another. When a user clicks an external link on one site in order to navigate to another, the address of the original site is sent as part of the request so that the next site can use it to determine which site the user came from. This information is used to allow the user to return to the old site, or to pay the owners of the old site a referral fee.
This is simply ridiculous. The Internet itself is arguably infringing on this patent:
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a unified system for capturing and tracking a co-marketing source which directed a new subscriber to an on-line service. It is a further object of the present invention to provide a system for capturing and tracking information identifying a co-marketing source which directed a new subscriber to an on-line service, which requires no participation or intervention from the new subscriber. It is a still further object of the present invention to provide a system for attaching navigational history information to a user traversing the world wide web so that a current web site could determine electronically at least the previous world wide web site visited by the user. It is a still further object of the present invention to provide a system which could be used in conjunction with relative universal resource locator addressing, which permitted a user in a particular directory at a web site to move up a directory tree. These and other objects of the invention will become apparent from the description of the invention which follows.
This is even broader than Bezos’ unenforceable patent attempt. It seems to focus no more sharply than "continuity of data association"—Forget about it.
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
commenting closed for this article
— Donald Swain Jul 22, 01:11 PM #