Re: Amazon's new cookie patent

Of course.

Cookies were documented in RFC 2109 in 1997 with an open ended usage in
mind.   A specific usage can't lock anyone out from doing the same thing.
Nothing new in the process.

This is just yet another  "ignore this patent" patent.  Don't worry about
it.  If  Amazon is going to bother you, then you probably more of a threat
to them in general and if its anything like IBM, they won't bother you until
you hit 2% of their market share.

-- 
Hector Santos, Santronics Software, Inc.
http://www.santronics.com


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Daniel Weitzner" <djweitzner@w3.org>
To: "Richard M. Smith" <rms@computerbytesman.com>
Cc: "W3C Public Web Plugins List" <public-web-plugins@w3.org>
Sent: Thursday, April 01, 2004 11:28 AM
Subject: Re: Amazon's new cookie patent



And the question is: is it still possible to comply with the cookie
RFCs without infringing this patent...



On Apr 1, 2004, at 11:11 AM, Richard M. Smith wrote:

> http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?
> Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/
> srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6,714,926.WKU.&OS=PN/6,714,926&RS=PN/
> 6,714,926
>
>
> Inventors:
>  Benson; Eric A. (Seattle, WA)
>
>  Assignee:
>  Amazon.com, Inc. (Seattle, WA)
>
>  Appl. No.:
>  494712
>
> Filed:
>  January 31, 2000
>
> Use of browser cookies to store structured data
>
>  Abstract
>
> A web site system implements a process for storing selected data
> structures within browser cookies. The data structures may contain a
> variety of different types of data elements, including N-bit integers
> and other non-character elements. A version tracking scheme provides
> forward and backward compatibility between client and server software.
> The process is implemented without the need for any browser
> extensions, and without the need for users to download any special
> code to their computers.
>
>  ....
>
>

Received on Thursday, 1 April 2004 14:39:28 UTC