Cendant Publishing has filed a patent infringement suit against Amazon.com for the technology that allows the giant online retailer to “push” product recommendations based on customers’ previous purchases.
The suit, filed Oct. 29 in U.S. District court in Wilmington, DE, claims that Cendant holds a patent that comprises the features used by Amazon, including the “Customers who bought this book also bought” text.
Cendant’s patent, U.S. Patent No. 6,782,370—known as “370” for short—was filed in March 1997 and describes “a computer-implemented method and system utilizing a distributed network for the recommendation of goods and/or services to potential customers based on a potential customer’s selection of goods and/or services and a database of previous customer purchasing history.” After being rejected in 1999 and 2000, a revised patent application was granted to Cendant in August 2004.
A decision in Cendant’s favor could have a wide impact for e-commerce, since many Web retailers besides Amazon include recommendation features on their Web sites that offer items to returning customers based on past buying history. Cendant is not requesting specific financial damages in the suit—only that Amazon cease allegedly using its patented technology without licensing it.
Cendant Corp., the parent of Cendant Publishing, was once an e-commerce player with such holdings as Books.com and NetGrocer. Today, Cendant owns the Days Inn and Super 8 lodging chains and real estate brokerages Coldwell Banker and Century 21. The company is now involved in the purchase of travel reservation system Orbitz.com.
Amazon has been both the target and the origin of patent infringement suits before. A pending suit by technology company Pinpoint, filed in July 2003, targets an aspect of the company’s recommendation function known as “collaborative filtering”. And in 1999 Amazon itself sued fellow bookseller Barnes and Noble over the use of proprietary one-click addressing solutions on its Web site.
And in September 2004, both Amazon and Barnesandnoble.com, along with movie renter Netflix and online retailer Overstock.com, were hit with lawsuits by British intellectual property firm BTG, for alleging infringing on patents on technology that tracks users’ movements around the Web.
