AN OVERBROAD PATENT ON offering coupons based on an item of interest at a user's location - This application from Ebay seeks to patent the idea of...determining the geographic location of a mobile device, identifying an item at the geographic location, and generating an incentive offered by a merchant based on the determined geographic location and the identified item! 10 minutes of your time can help narrow US patent applications before they become patents. Follow @askpatents on twitter to help.
QUESTION - Have you seen anything that was published before 3/17/2011 that discusses:
- Presenting incentives offered by nearby merchants based on an item identified at the geographic location of the user
If so, please submit evidence of prior art as an answer to this question. We welcome multiple answers from the same individual.
EXTRA CREDIT - Incentives may be discounts, sales, rebates, coupons, item recommendations etc. A user may specify an item of interest using various input means of a mobile device such as text identification, audio identification, machine-readable symbol identification, image identification, or video identification.
TITLE: Determining incentives related to items identified at user location
Summary: [Translated from Legalese into English] Determining geographic location of a mobile device, identifying an item specified via the mobile device at the determined geographic location, generating an incentive offered by a merchant within a fixed geographic area based on the determined geographic location and the identified item, and expanding the fixed geographic area when the generated incentive is not related to the identified item.
- Publication Number: US 20120239483 A1
- Application Number: US 13/339,235
- Assignee: Ebay
- Prior Art Date: Seeking prior Art predating 3/17/2011
- Link to Google Prior Art Search - "Find Prior Art"
Claim 1 requires each and every step below:
A system comprising:
a first module configured to determine a geographic location of a mobile device;
a second module configured to identify an item specified at the geographic location of the mobile device via an optical input of the mobile device; and
a processor-implemented incentive module configured to generate a limited-time incentive offer from at least one merchant within a predefined geographic area determined using the geographic location of the mobile device, the limited-time incentive offer based on the item specified at the geographic location of the mobile device, and to expand the predefined geographic area when the item specified at the geographic location of the mobile device does not correspond to any item identified in the at least one limited-time incentive offer of the at least one merchant within the predefined geographic area.
In English this means:
A system comprising various modules to:
Determine geographic location of a mobile device;
Identify an item specified at the determined geographic location via an optical input to the mobile device (the example given is the phone reading the bar code of the item using its camera);
Generate limited-time incentive offers from merchants within a fixed geographic area determined using the geographic location of the mobile device; and
Expand the fixed geographic area if the generated limited-time incentive offers are not related to the specified item,
The limited-time incentive offers are based on the item specified at the geographic location of the mobile device.
Good prior art would be evidence of a system that did each and every one of these steps prior to 3/17/2011
You're probably aware of ten pieces of art that meet this criteria already... separately, the applicant is claiming A user preference setting to define a search radius and preferred merchants
"Offering incentives related to an item based on geographic location of the item"
What is good prior art? Please see our FAQ.
Want to help? Please vote or comment on submissions below. We welcome you to post your own request for prior art on other questionable US Patent Applications.
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