Filed under: Business, News, Search
Amazon get patent for URL search string
Wait, that can't possibly mean what we think it means. They have a patent on URLS like "www.a9.com/San Francisco Hotels"? Yup, that's exactly what it means. Amazon claims that what differentiates these URLs from others is the lack of special formatting language like "search?q=."
Now, there are at least two basic problems with this as far as we can tell:
- Generally you're only supposed to be able to get a patent for things that aren't obvious.
- We're pretty sure there will be a lot of companies who can show "prior art," meaning they had URLs following this format long before Amazon filed for the patent in 2004.
[via Slashdot]
So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do.
Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game.
The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Guido said 10:02AM on 10-24-2007
so amazon is trying to patent .htaccess ?
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James said 11:51AM on 10-24-2007
Next up, "A Method for Displaying Text and Images On a Remote Computer". You laugh now, but...
...
Oh wait, Al Gore invented the Internet already. My bad.
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Conda said 5:07PM on 10-24-2007
patenting the methods of mod_rewrite, what will they think of next?
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Michael Neel said 7:01PM on 10-24-2007
Insane... the CGI protocol defined "PATH_INFO" years... decades ago.
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