more on Amazon patents cookies

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Delivered-To: dfarber+ () ux13 sp cs cmu edu
Date: Fri, 02 Apr 2004 01:56:08 +0000
From: John Levine <johnl () taugh com>
Subject: Re: [IP] Amazon patents cookies
To: dave () farber net

>Subject: Amazon patents cookies
>
>United States Patent        6,714,926
>Benson                      March 30, 2004

It's not patenting cookies, it's patenting a clever way to encode
structured data in a cookie as a string, then recover the data
structure when the cookie is returned, by using a code in the cookie
to identify a data schema and then using the schema to decode the rest
of the cookie.

As always, you have to read the claims to know what's actually being
patented.  There are certainly a lot of really stupid software patents,
but I never heard of anyone doing schema-based data flattening into
cookies so this probably does meet the novelty and non-obviousness
requirements for a valid patent.

Regards,
John Levine, johnl () taugh com, Taughannock Networks, Trumansburg NY
http://www.taugh.com
 

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