[ Thanks to Nobody for this link.
]
“Amazon.com Inc. has been granted a patent on its
BookMatcher service, a process that uses collaborative filtering to
make book recommendations to patrons.“
“Patent No. 6,064,980, issued May 16 by the U.S. Patent and
Trademark Office, covers a process by which products are
recommended to a user based on the ratings given by previous users.
The Amazon patent includes a technique to automatically update the
database of recommended items based on the underlying database of
books available. It also uses statistical analysis to validate
recommendations before offering them….”
“In March, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos called for patent reform,
saying the process needed to be overhauled to reflect the different
nature of software innovation. Amazon did not return calls for
comment on the BookMatcher patent.”