Amazon Wants Patent For Inserting Ads Into Books

theodp writes "Three Amazon inventors set out to correct what they felt was a real problem: that 'out-of-print or rare books ... typically do not include advertisements ... the content is fixed and, therefore, has not been adapted to modern marketing.' Their solution is spelled out in newly-disclosed Amazon patent applications for On-Demand Generating E-Book Content with Advertising and Incorporating Advertising in On-Demand Generated Content. From the patent apps, here's what the future of reading may look like: 'For instance, if a restaurant is described on page 12, [then the advertising page], either on page 11 or page 13, may include advertisements about restaurants, wine, food, etc., which are related to restaurants and dining.' So, what would a delightfully-tacky-yet-unrefined Hooters ad do for your Hemingway experience?"

Re:Let them patent it

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It wouldn't at all surprise me if somebody or somebodies, including the big guys, try hard to kill this one before it leaves the application phase.

A huge percentage of web pages these days are dynamically generated, on demand, and includes ads. This patent could, plausibly, be seen to cover that. First, that provides a giant helping of prior art. Second, it means that there are loads of big serious companies who Amazon could theoretically go after if they got this patent.

There Were Ads in Books in the 80s

[miller60]

Not sure if this serves as prior art re e-books, but Chris Whittle was including ads in books in the late 1980s [nytimes.com], before Amazon was launched and e-books existed in a meaningful commercial form.

Re:How Pointless....

[EdIII]

Can't we just start burning Amazon marketers?

+11 Insightful
+11 Inspiring
+1,000,000 JUSTICE