Google Parcel Service? Search giant patents shipping notifications

While the patent is still pretty dumb, the claim is a bit more specific than this article summarizes. The claim seems carefully worded to exclude Amazon, UPS, and USPS shipping notifications, by limiting itself to "a broker computer system independent of the shipper and a merchant". UPS and the USPS are shippers of course, and Amazon is the merchant for the queries it brokers.

However, it seems like a real stretch for non-obviousness: they're trying to patent the idea of doing exactly what every shipping-status system does, only as a third party that simply queries those services, and then sends emails to the user when something changes.

Maybe it's a business-method patent rather than a technology patent. It's not even a patent on notification-system querying, because Amazon does that, only it does it for products it sold. It seems the only thing the claim is claiming as novel is the business idea of doing it as a third-party monitoring service.

Here's the text of claim 1, with extra paragraphing and bracketed letters added:

--snip--

1. A method of providing notification of impending delivery of a shipment shipped by a shipper to a shipping address specified by a customer, comprising:

[a] periodically querying, by a broker computer system independent of the shipper and a merchant and which enabled the customer to purchase an item contained in the shipment from the merchant, a shipper computer system to obtain status information for the shipment with each query,

[b] wherein a periodic query of the shipment computer system comprises:

[b1] requesting status information from the shipper computer system by providing a shipment identifier of the shipment to the shipper computer system; and

[b2] receiving status information in response thereto;

[c] responsive to status information obtained with a periodic query indicating an estimated delivery date for the shipment,

[c1] halting, by the broker computer system, the periodic queries and

[c2] scheduling the restart of periodic queries of the shipper computer system a day prior to the estimated delivery date;

[d] restarting, by the broker computer system, periodic queries of the shipper computer system the day prior to the estimated delivery date to obtain updated status information with each query;

[e] responsive to updated status information obtained with a periodic query indicating that the shipment is out for delivery to the customer,

[e1] halting, by the broker computer system, the periodic queries and

[e2] calculating an estimated delivery time for the shipment based at least in part on the status information; and

[f] sending, by the broker computer system, an electronic message including the estimated delivery time to the customer.

--snip--

The USPTO file history is available at http://portal.uspto.gov/external/portal/pair. You have to submit the patent number (7,996,328) to the search engine and go through a CAPTCHA; a direct link to individual documents in the file history doesn't seem to work.

On 12/24/2008, the patent examiner initially rejected the claims as directed to non-statutory subject matter (a "section-101 rejection"), as well as to being directed to subject matter that would have been obvious in view of the prior art (a "section-103 rejection").

Google's attorneys argued that the examiner should drop the section-101 rejection, and amended the claims to overcome the section-103 obviousness rejection in a filing on 4/24/2009.

On 7/22/2009, the examiner agreed to drop the section-101 rejection, but cited new grounds for the section-103 obviousness rejection.

NOTE: The examiner's withdrawal of the section-101 rejection was almost a year before the Supreme Court's decision in the Bilski case concerning business methods, http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-964.pdf; at this point there's no way to know whether the examiner would have considered the claims to be unpatentable under Bilski for being directed to an abstract idea.

After more amendments and a telephone conference between Google's attorneys and the examiner on 10/22/2010, the claims were finally allowed on 3/31/2011.