This Amazon patent lists Jeff Bezos as an inventor and is directed towards user-to-user payment service with payee-specific pay pages. Mr. Bezos was awarded U.S. Patent 7536351 entitled “User-to-user payment service with payee-specific pay pages” on May 19, 2009. The utility patent has been cited 25 times by other U.S. patents in the field of it methods for management and in other fields.
A network-based payment service provides various features for facilitating online, user-to-user payments. One feature involves the ability for users to define customized pay pages for receiving payments from other users. The pay pages are preferably hosted by a service provider site that handles the collection process, and may be created using pay page templates that specify the layouts and behaviors of the pay pages. In one embodiment, a pay page owner can also define one or more “pay boxes” to allow payments to be initiated from other web sites, which may include the web sites of associates who receive commissions on resulting payments. Another feature involves the ability for users to make single-action payments from web sites external to the service provider site. Also disclosed are various features for controlling access to content and services based on whether, or an extent to which, a visitor has made voluntary or mandatory payments. Link: U.S. Patent 7536351
Amazon filed this utility patent on August 13, 2001 giving it a processing time of 2836 days (compared to an average processing time of 2656 in the field). They have a total number of 158 patents. The first named inventor is Jeffrey P. Bezos of Seattle, WA. The patent was allowed by primary examiner James Kramer and assistant examiner Jason M Borlinghaus.
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