From Judge Mayer's dissent in DDR Holdings:
This is incorrect. DDR’s claims do, in fact, simply take a
well-known and widely-applied business practice and
apply it using a generic computer and the Internet. The
idea of having a “store within a store” was in widespread
use well before the dawn of e-commerce. For example,
National Leisure Group, Inc. (“NLG”), one of the defendants
here, previously “sold vacations at . . . BJ’s Wholesale
Clubs through point of purchase displays in the 45
BJ’s Clubs along the Eastern Seaboard.” Br. of Defendants-
Appellants National Leisure Group, Inc. and World
Travel Holdings, Inc. at 4. DDR’s patents are directed to
the same concept. Just as visitors to BJ’s Wholesale
Clubs could purchase travel products from NLG without
leaving the BJ’s warehouse, the claimed system permits a
person to purchase goods from a third-party vendor, but
still have the visual “impression that she is viewing pages
served by the [original host merchant].” ’399 patent col.3
ll.23–24; see ante at 3 (explaining that DDR’s claimed
system “permits a website visitor, in a sense, to be in two
places at the same time”). Indeed, any doubt as to whether
the claimed system is merely an Internet iteration of
an established business practice is laid to rest by the fact
that one of the named inventors acknowledged that the
innovative aspect of his claimed invention was “[t]aking
something that worked in the real world and doing it on
the Internet.” J.A. 03208.
Representative claim 19 of the ’399
patent recites:
19. A system useful in an outsource provider serving
web pages offering commercial opportunities,
the system comprising:
(a) a computer store containing data, for each of a
plurality of first web pages, defining a plurality
of visually perceptible elements, which visually
perceptible elements correspond to the plurality
of first web pages;
(i) wherein each of the first web pages belongs
to one of a plurality of web page owners;
(ii) wherein each of the first web pages displays
at least one active link associated with a
commerce object associated with a buying
opportunity of a selected one of a plurality of
merchants; and
(iii) wherein the selected merchant, the outsource
provider, and the owner of the first
web page displaying the associated link are
each third parties with respect to one other;
(b) a computer server at the outsource provider,
which computer server is coupled to the computer
store and programmed to:
(i) receive from the web browser of a computer
user a signal indicating activation of one of the links displayed by one of the first web
pages;
(ii) automatically identify as the source page
the one of the first web pages on which the
link has been activated;
(iii) in response to identification of the source
page, automatically retrieve the stored data
corresponding to the source page; and
(iv) using the data retrieved, automatically
generate and transmit to the web browser a
second web page that displays: (A) information
associated with the commerce object
associated with the link that has been activated,
and (B) the plurality of visually perceptible
elements visually corresponding to
the source page.
In other words, according to Mayer J.,
Every night,
When the little boys and little
other surfers of the Internets things
go to sleep ...
Little elves appear in a big ole' warehouse and build a whole new BJ "store", and a kiosk in the store and ship the whole mere little ole' "store" things to wherever next our little boys and little other surfers of the Internets things will be the next day.
Joy to the world.
All the boys and girls.
Jeremiah really was a bullfrog
and a good friend
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