, ; "Kingsley Uyi Idehen's Weblog" . , ; ; ; ; "2003-05-14T18:14:29Z"^^ ; "2007-05-28T16:52:58.000-04:00"^^ ; "Amazon Takes Pikachu To The Patent Office" ; ; "2003-05-14T18:14:29Z" ; "2007-05-28T20:52:58Z" ; "Amazon Takes Pikachu To The Patent Office" ; , , ; "Amazon Takes Pikachu To The Patent Office" ; ; "<p>\n<a href="http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/14/1316256">Amazon Takes Pikachu To The Patent Office</a> </p>\n<p>\n <strong>from the it&#39;s-not-&quot;would-be-nice-to-catch-them-all&quot; dept.<br />\n </strong><a href="mailto:theodp@aol.com">theodp</a> writes <i>&quot;On Tuesday, Amazon was awarded a patent for <a href="http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6,564,213.WKU.&OS=PN/6,564,213&RS=PN/6,564,213">Search Query Autocompletion</a>. From the Summary of the Invention--&#39;For example, if Pokemon toys are currently the best selling or most-frequently-searched-for items within the database, the term <a href="http://www.pokemon.com/">POKEMON</a> may be suggested whenever a user enters the letters &quot;PO,&quot; even though many hundreds of other items in the database may start with &quot;PO.&#39;&quot;</i> See, Amazon practices the mantra &quot;Gotta catch &#39;em all&quot; with patents. </p>\n<p>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). </p>\n<p>\u00A0</p>" ; "ed12ffaf5bc8d93a0b9c97df3cefde29" ; ; . . ; "Kingsley Idehen" . , ; ; "Kingsley Uyi Idehen's Weblog" ; ; . ; . ; ; "Kingsley Idehen" .