05-09-2005 13:31									#1
	Two of Amazon's funnier patents Support Apolyton, buy Call to Power 2

quote: 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).

quote: Method and system for placing a purchase order via a communications network Abstract A method and system for placing an order to purchase an item via the Internet. The order is placed by a purchaser at a client system and received by a server system. The server system receives purchaser information including identification of the purchaser, payment information, and shipment information from the client system. The server system then assigns a client identifier to the client system and associates the assigned client identifier with the received purchaser information. The server system sends to the client system the assigned client identifier and an HTML document identifying the item and including an order button. The client system receives and stores the assigned client identifier and receives and displays the HTML document. In response to the selection of the order button, the client system sends to the server system a request to purchase the identified item. The server system receives the request and combines the purchaser information associated with the client identifier of the client system to generate an order to purchase the item in accordance with the billing and shipment information whereby the purchaser effects the ordering of the product by selection of the order button.

The rest of the patents are mostly around search queries and the recommendation features they have. These are all (some?) their patents: 5,715,399; 5,960,411; 6,006,225; 6,029,141; 6,064,980; 6,144,958; 6,169,986; 6,185,558; 6,266,649; 6,317,722; 6,360,254; 6,366,910; 6,401,084

Anyway, I wonder if above patents are still "active". I'd imagine you could sue any online shop on the internet with these two if the full text isn't more restrictive than the abstract.