Pre-Grant Publication Number: 20090157497
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Jason DeVeau Rosen (over 3 years ago)
Susan,
I looked at the Referralsoft program. It appears that the program has been around since ~2004 (this was verified via internet archive). However, I did not see any mention of the program providing a means to supply users with a commission for making referrals. This is specifically addressed in claim #5 of the P2P application. If I am wrong, then I think your prior art is ok.Claude Baudoin (over 3 years ago)
The first claim seems to me to be purely a BUSINESS METHOD -- the idea that you can market something by rewarding the people who forward the information about a purchaseable product or service to someone else who ends up buying it. This claim being purely for the business method, I am not sure that it is patentable. Moreover, it is obvious (even without any technical knowledge).
The next independent claim, no. 7, basically says "you can use a computer system to facilitate this process." Yes, sure, but again that's obvious. There is nothing special in the computer system in question -- it has the same components that any social networking and/or user rating system (à la Amazon.com) would have. So this is also an extremely weak claim.
So this boils down to "perhaps you can sell stuff better if you reward people who forward your offer to others in their network, and you can set up a computer system to do that" which is all obvious. It is also unenforceable, because anyone who would implement some variant of this system could easily demonstrate that they picked up the idea from a combination of the mechanisms in place on Amazon, Facebook, and other sites -- not from this "invention."PEER TO PATENT ACTIVITY
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