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All your reviews belong to Amazon.com
Patent grab triple whammy
By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco
Published Saturday 12th November 2005 05:04 GMT
Amazon.com has been granted three detailed patents covering purchase circles, consumer reviews, and search results in the form of products from multiple product categories.
It's a sweeping landgrab which puts e-commerce rivals on the alert. The techniques granted to Amazon.com by the patent office are already ubiquitous on commercial and social networking web sites.

Patent 6,963,848 filed March 2, 2000 and granted November 8, covers "Methods and system of obtaining consumer reviews".
Patent 6,963,867, filed on March 31, 2003, covers "Search query processing to provide category-ranked presentation of search results".
Patent 6,963,850, filed on August 19, 1999 covers "Computer services for assisting users in locating and evaluating items in an electronic catalog based on actions performed by members of specific user communities".