[Cialug] United States Patent: 7325045

[Todd Walton]

On Wed, May 7, 2008 at 1:19 PM, Ralph <kesselr1 at mchsi.com> wrote:
>
> Apparently  Amazon has a patent on 404

No, not on 404s.  On the idea of a client component detecting a 404
and coming up with a suitable alternative to display by querying a
"error processing server".

For example, if a Firefox plugin were configured to detect that your
request for http://allstars.com has 404'd, so it sends a request to
some server somewhere to come up with an alternative.  The server,
being all hip and web 2.0, searches its data for what "allstars" could
be referring to, and tells the plugin to send you to
http://basketballlegends.com.  Or... your plugin sees the 404 and
turns around and asks google if it has a cached copy of the page.

This is substantially more useful and unique than just a 404.

Not that I agree that merits an imaginary property monopoly.

I thought it was interesting that they used the word "clickstream" in
their legalese.

-todd