[Sigia-l] Does this mean what I think it means?

[Listera]

> This may be old to y'all now,

What? That the USPTO is still on drugs?

Well, here's the abstract in its entirety:

"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."

Appropriately, the headline preceding the abstract is:

"Method and system for displaying and editing of information"

In other words, Amazon.com claims to have invented essentially the HTTP/HTML
request-response loop between a user-agent and a server, and ecommerce in
passing.

Patent was filed Sept 1997, and is a continuation of a number of other
patents. Certainly, I wasn't the only one doing this prior to late 1997. I'd
love to know who they think they'll sue. :-)

Ziya
Nullius in Verba