Amazon Slaps Orbitz and Avis With Patent Lawsuit

theodp writes "Amazon has sued Cendant for allegedly infringing four patents covering electronic commerce at its Orbitz, Avis and other Web sites. Cendant, the biggest U.S. provider of travel and real-estate services, knew 'or should have known' it infringed when using the tools to secure credit-card transactions, handle customer referrals and manage data, according to the lawsuit filed June 22 in federal court in Seattle. Amazon itself was sued by Cendant last year for patent infringement over its recommendation technology. So much for five years of Amazon patent reform."

get Book Burro (Greasemonkey script)

[cahiha]

So many things point to Amazon that it seems like a lot of hassle to buy anywhere else, but it's not.

Get yourself a copy of Book Burro [overstimulate.com]; it will automatically annotate any Amazon page you go to with a list of other bookstores you can buy the book at, as well as the prices (often lower than Amazon).

Re:Next we know,

[DrSkwid]

The story of the lightbulb also incorporates a tale of success for the patent system.

Edison used existing patents to avoid dead end research.

He pre-announced the vaporware lightbulb before he had even got anywhere near completing his research.

He also sued Swan for patent infringment, despite Swan's patent being granted 1 year prior to Edisons. The two of them decided to join forces instead of continued litigation and became the world's leading suppliers of lightbulbs.

So, the world benefitted from the patent system and it's litigating participants because eventually common sense prevailed.

http://www.unmuseum.org/lightbulb.htm [unmuseum.org]

Re:Considering Software Patents are...

[ppanon]

and paint (subtractive - blue, yellow, red)

Shouldn't that be cyan, yellow, and magenta?

cyan != blue and red != magenta.

Re:Next we know,

[silentbozo]

You must be thinking about Forgent [forgent.com], who basically abandoned their scheduling product line in favor of buying up patent portfolios, and suing everyone in sight that might be violating them [geek.com]. Unlike SCO, Forgent has actually succeeded in ripping off millions of dollars in licenses for such things like JPEG [wired.com], and are moving into suing PVR manufacturers.

Credit Card Patent referred to in article?

[tirk]

I think this is one of the patents refered to in the article - it seems a pretty obvious "invention" to me - gotta wonder about some of these patents. ------ Secure method and system for communicating a list of credit card numbers over a non-secure network Abstract A method and system for securely indicating to a customer one or more credit card numbers that a merchant has on file for the customer when communicating with the customer over a non-secure network. The merchant sends a message to the customer that contains only a portion of each of the credit card numbers that are on file with the merchant. The message may also contain a notation explaining which portion of each of the credit card numbers has been extracted. A computer (38) retrieves the credit card numbers on file for the customer in a database (40), constructs the message, and transits the message to a customer location (10) over the Internet network (30) or other non-secure network. The customer can then confirm in a return message that a specific one of the credit card numbers on file with the merchant should be used in charging a transaction. Since only a portion of the credit card number(s) are included in any message transmitted, a third party cannot discover the customer's complete credit card number(s). http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PT O1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm &r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=5715399.WKU.&OS=PN/5715399&RS=PN/ 5715399 [uspto.gov]

Re:It's not just Amazon.

[Eccles]

Simply too much prior art, at least in the software field, gets by them. Had they been behaving this way in the early 1900s, Ford Motor Company would have gotten a patent for "A Method Of Forming Molten Metal", or some equally silly thing.

Google "Selden patent." Something even more ridiculous was patented.