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Via slashdot, we see another brilliant patent awarded by the US Patent office:

Search engine system supporting inclusion of unformatted search string after domain name portion of URL

Abstract

A web site system provides functionality for searching a repository of information, such as the World Wide Web, by including a search string at the end of a URL without any special formatting. In one embodiment, when the system receives a request for a URL of the form www.domain_name/char_string, where char_string is a character string that may include spaces and non-alphabetic characters, the system initially determines whether the character string includes a prefix that identifies the URL as a non-search-request URL. If no such prefix is present, the character string is used in its entirely as a search string to execute a search, and the results of the search are returned to the user.

 

You ask: How in the world was this ever even submitted?!

eln notes:

I think the flowchart makes that obvious.

During the course of the business day, most people will jot down notes about various things discussed during meetings or at informal cubicle conversations or whatever. Usually, these notes are kept for some period of time until they become no longer relevant, at which time they’re either thrown out or shredded.

At my office, we throw such notes into little blue bins under our desks. The contents of these bins are then taken by a company who shreds them. In Amazon’s case, the contents of the blue bins are apparently sent to the patent office.

So there you have it.

 

Are we ever going to fix our broken patent system?

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Posted on October 23rd, 2007 by Green Guy
Filed under: Uncategorized