> the "what" could be: "A method of reducing the number of online sales that are attempted but somehow aborted".
That's a good point. But it does open the door to patenting so many things it would make business impossible - store layout? Ad composition? Sales timing? Employee treatment?
The other problem is the 'could' in your hypothetical - as far as I know, that's not what Amazon put on the patent application. Probably because they knew it is not patentable subject matter.
That's a good point. But it does open the door to patenting so many things it would make business impossible - store layout? Ad composition? Sales timing? Employee treatment?
Fortunately the law does not seem to have such a broad view of what is patentable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patentable_subject_matter#Unit...
The other problem is the 'could' in your hypothetical - as far as I know, that's not what Amazon put on the patent application. Probably because they knew it is not patentable subject matter.