Amazon Takes Pikachu To The Patent Office
from the it's-not-"would-be-nice-to-catch-them-all" dept.
theodp writes "On Tuesday, Amazon was awarded a patent for Search Query Autocompletion. From the Summary of the Invention--'For example, if Pokemon toys are currently the best selling or most-frequently-searched-for items within the database, the term POKEMON may be suggested whenever a user enters the letters "PO," even though many hundreds of other items in the database may start with "PO.'" See, Amazon practices the mantra "Gotta catch 'em all" with patents.
Is this real! How can every fundamental database programming technique that has been in existence for years be co-opted by Amazon simply becuase they have realized that the Web is actually a Database (albeit distributed and free form in nature today, and obvioulsy semnatic in the future).