15 Mar
2008
23957
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New Amazon super duper patent
A few days ago Amazon was awarded with patent on how to redirect a user to a more relevant page than a standard 404 error: "Page Not Found". It is kind of interesting because I developed a Cherokee handler for this back in 2002, more than one year before Amazon filled their patent.
I wonder how longer this patent craziness will last.
Posted by Alvaro Lopez Ortega
Comments
Crispin on Sat Mar 15 16:43:22 2008
570
Although the patent is crazy, claim 2 does talk about a "plurality of different sources", so the cherokee handler (and lots of similar features in other web servers) wouldn't be prior art as they just look at a single source (the files in the directories). Disclaimer: IANAL, I work for Zeus Technology (developers of Zeus Web Server)
Ketil on Sat Mar 15 17:30:30 2008
573
You should direct this to the patent office anyway!
K. Ralho on Sat Mar 15 17:50:19 2008
574
Sue Amazon!
Joe Buck on Sat Mar 15 18:51:56 2008
575
Directing it to the SFLC might be a better bet. They have a project to overturn bad patents. softwarefreedom.org
KC on Sun Mar 16 02:08:02 2008
589
It's not really about 'how to redirect a user to a more relevant page than a standard 404' -- people have been doing that for a long time (ie, mod_speling has been around for many years). It's about having a program running on the client machine that says "this page won't load for some reason, I'll ask <error server> if it has a cached copy or a similar page". I imagine they want to make it a feature of a toolbar browser plugin to connect to a9.com and automatically check pages on a 404. A stupid patent yes, but the only companies that it affects are the search engine companies (Google, MS Live, etc).
Gunnar on Mon Mar 17 20:52:22 2008
609
And in case you push this somewhere... In 1998, I had my webserver installed with a 404 redirect to Apache Guardian, a simple CGI that logged any break-in attempts (by regex IIRC).
