Friday, June 16, 2017

Amazon gets US 9,665,881: Physical store online shopping control



The background section states:


A wide variety of retailers maintain physical store locations that offer items for point of sale purchase. Consumers are able to browse items within a physical store and personally evaluate the items. A consumer may also be able to obtain item information and recommendations from sales representatives at the physical store. However, with the widespread proliferation of electronic commerce, a consumer is also able to purchase many of the same items from retailers that maintain an online presence. Accordingly, a negative scenario may exist for a physical store retailer when a consumer evaluates items at the physical store, leverages physical store sales representatives, and then reviews pricing information online in order to purchase the same item from an online retailer. The physical store retailer pays for floor space, sales representative time, product inventory management, and other costs while not being able to complete a sales transaction.





The first claim recites:



A system, comprising: at least one wireless access point configured to provide Internet access to a consumer device within a retail establishment associated with a retailer, and at least one processing component configured to: identify a first uniform resource locater (URL) requested, via the wireless access point, by a browser application executing on the consumer device; determine, based upon a comparison of the first URL to stored information associated with one or more competitors of the retailer, that the first URL is associated with a competitor Web site; identify an offering of an item on the competitor Web site; identify (i) retailer information associated with an offering of the item by the retailer and (ii) competitor information associated with the offering of the item on the competitor Web site, wherein the retailer information comprises a first price for the offering of the item by the retailer and the competitor information comprises a second price for the offering of the item on the competitor Web site; determine that a difference between the first price and the second price exceeds a first threshold value or that a consumer value of a consumer associated with the consumer device does not exceed a second threshold value; determine, responsive to determining that the difference between the first price and the second price exceeds the first threshold value or that the consumer value exceeds the second threshold value, that information associated with an offering of a complementary item that is complementary to the item should be presented to the consumer in lieu of counter-competitive information that competes with the offering of the item on the competitor Web site; and redirect the browser application to a second URL different from the first URL, wherein the second URL is associated with a Web site that includes the information associated with the offering of the complementary item.



Of some interest for this case, note the non-publication request under 35 USC 122(b) filed by Amazon on May 4, 2012.
Thus there is no "published patent application" corresponding to US '881.

See also
https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/15/15812986/amazon-patent-online-price-checking

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