[54] INTERNET-BASED CUSTOMER REFERRAL SYSTEM
[75] Inventors: Jeffrey P. Bezos; Sheldon J. Kaphan;
Ellen L. Ratajak; Thomas K.
Schonhoff, all of Seattle, Wash.
[73] Assignee: Amazon.com, Inc., Seattle, Wash.
[21] Appl. No.: 08/883,770 [22] Filed: Jun. 27, 1997
[51] Int. C I. G06F 17/60
[52] U.S. CI 705/27; 705/26; 705/10
[58] Field of Search 705/27, 10, 14,
705/26; 707/513; 395/200.3, 200.33, 200.53,
200.54, 200.57
[56] References Cited
U.S. PATENT DOCUMENTS
5,319,542 6/1994 King, Jr. et al 705/27
5,537,314 7/1996 Kanter .
5,590,197 12/1996 Chen et al. .
(List continued on next page.)
OTHER PUBLICATIONS
Dialog file 16 (database PROMT(R)), No. 6016914, "BookSite launches version 3.0 of the popular electronic commerce web site.", Business Wire, 2 pages, Feb. 23, 1996. Dialog file 16 (database PROMT(R)), No. 6296727, "Amazon.com introduces "Amazon.com Associates"—a new model for internet-based commerce." Business Wire, 3 pages, Jul. 18, 1996.
Can Mixing 'Cookies' with Online Marketing be a Receipe
for Heartburn? (Infoworld, vol. 18, No. 30), Jul. 22, 1996.
Real Time Travel Info Available Online (Dialog database file
9, document 01107096), Jan. 17, 1995.
Online Growth Virtually Untapped; PC Vendors Taking
More Advantage of Booming Sales (Computer Retail Week
vol. 4, No. 64, p. 160), Jun. 6, 1994.
Selected document from Books.com Web site describing
Book Stacks Unlimited links partner program, downloaded
and printed Jun. 20, 1997 and Jun. 23, 1997.
Selected documents from Incognito Cafe Web site describing several on-line bookstore links, undated (5 printed pages).
Resnick, P., Iacovou, N., Suchak, M., Bergstrom, P., and Riedl, J., GroupLens: An Open Architecture for Collaborative Filtering of Netnews. Proceedings of ACM 1994 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Chapel Hill, NC, pp. 175-186.
Balabanovic, M., and Shoham, Y, Fab: Content-Based, Collaborative Recommendation. Communications of the ACM, vol. 40., No. 3, (Mar. 1997) pp. 66-73.
Primary Examiner—Emanuel Todd Voeltz
Assistant Examiner—Alexander Kalinowski
Attorney, Agent, or Firm—Knobbe, Martens Olson & Bear,
LLP
[57] ABSTRACT
Disclosed is an Internet-based referral system that enables individuals and other business entities ("associates") to market products, in return for a commission, that are sold from a merchant's Web site. The system includes automated registration software that runs on the merchant's Web site to allow entities to register as associates. Following registration, the associate sets up a Web site (or other information dissemination system) to distribute hypertextual catalog documents that includes marketing information (product reviews, recommendations, etc.) about selected products of the merchant. In association with each such product, the catalog document includes a hypertextual "referral link" that allows a user ("customer") to link to the merchant's site and purchase the product. When a customer selects a referral link, the customer's computer transmits unique IDs of the selected product and of the associate to the merchant's site, allowing the merchant to identify the product and the referring associate. If the customer subsequently purchases the product from the merchant's site, a commission is automatically credited to an account of the referring associate. The merchant site also implements an electronic shopping cart that allows the customer to select products from multiple different Web sites, and then perform a single "check out" from the merchant's site.
42 Claims, 14 Drawing Sheets
