Microsoft recently obtained a patent may undermine many of its competitors, including retailers of electronic books.
Originally filed in November 2004, the document in question is entitled "Methods to buy products through a customer portal. Custodians of the patent explains, so that the gate (the application) may carry a dedicated browser to perform a particular action, such as consulting or purchasing eBooks." To do this, the browser (the application) may be deliberately crippled to not only point to a specific page. Typically, the manufacturer of a machine wish to redirect the user, and only to his booth download.
The magazine EbookNewser believes that this patent would then be a threat to publishers of digital content such as kiosks e-books or specific applications (NYTimes). It has become increasingly common to pick the rendering engine of a browser and redirect users to a web page to perform an action through an application. Thus the patent could cover some practical applications of publishers of e-commerce (Amazon) or even streaming content playback.
It still remains to be seen what Microsoft has to do with these new rights of intellectual property.
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