Just FYI...
In the "Bogus Patents" category, Oracle is doing its best to catch up to
Amazon:
http://www.internetnews.com/intra-news/article/0,,7_868161,00.html
Excerpt:
The Redwood City, Calif.-based e-business giant said that with the
acquisition (financial details were not disclosed) it has obtained U.S.
Patent 4,799,156 entitled "Interactive Market Management System," and the
Canadian counterpart patent.
The patent was granted in 1986 to Eyal Shavit and Lester Teichner, long
before there was a World Wide Web.
Shavit and Teichner recognized the significance of electronic, interactive
marketplaces more than 15 years ago.
They described it at the time by saying that "dramatic new efficiencies
can be provided by the configuration of online interactive concurrent
electronic services which creates a marketplace which can serve a wide
spectrum of buyers, wholesalers, distributors, suppliers, agents, and
other service providers within an industry or multiple industries, as well
as to freight, financial, and other services deployed over any number of
existing communications systems."
That's clearly not a bad description of B2C and B2B e-commerce. Keep in
mind that the Internet wasn't even officially born (or commonly
recognized) until 1983, when ARPA Net changed over to the then-new TCP/IP
protocol.
-Ron
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