Amazon Gets Patents on Consumer Reviews???

... and, in sharp contrast to my previous post, Internetnews.com reports that Amazon was awarded three new patents, covering its purchase circles, search and consumer reviews.

The third patent, on consumer reviews, even covers collecting reviews by letting visitors to a Web site fill out a form.

Surprisingly enough, these wonderful patents aren't mentioned on the Amazon press release page. Could it be that they find this somewhat embarrassing?

This might generate a few more posts similar to Scobleizer's "slave generated content" post.

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