Amazon has recently been awarded U.S. Patent No. 7,739,139 for a "Social Networking System." Friendster has previously patented a very similar social networking method and actually has 7 patents in total related to social networking that cover similar matter. It is unclear exactly what overlap there is, but it seems like there could be some.
If you read the claims of the Amazon patent, it reads an awful lot like Facebook. For instance, in claim 1:
"providing a user interface for users to establish contact relationships with other users of the service such that each user can have one or more contacts, said user interface enabling a user to identify other users of the service, and to selectively initiate the generation of requests to establish contact relationships with the identified users"
"Generation of requests to establish contact relationships" = "Friending someone" ?
Claim 9:
"9. The method of claim 1, wherein the method comprises providing functionality for the first user to grant different permission levels to different contacts of the first user, such that some contacts of the first user are provided access to different types of personal data of the first user than others contacts of the first user."
Adjustable Facebook privacy settings?
Also, claim 12:
12. The method of claim 1, wherein the personal data of the first user comprises an identification of a school attended by the first user and an associated date range of attendance, and the method further comprises the server computer system using said personal data to identify, and inform the first user of, other users of the service who attended said school in said date range.
"Identification by school with associated date range of attendance" sounds essentially the same as sorting people by college and graduating year.
The whole situation has a sort of "cold war" feel to it. This is clearly a posturing by Amazon, but it is unclear what they have in mind. It will be interesting to see where Amazon goes with the patent. The patent also comes right when Bilski might be on deck, which could invalidate the entire thing altogether.
Leave a comment