A patent for online purchasing made by Amazon in May of this year had been rejected under prior art, but now it seems Amazon’s lawyers have reworded the request to make it sufficiently patent-worthy.

The patent abstract granted to Amazon reads as follows:

Coordinating delivery of a gift from a gift giver to a recipient when sufficient information to deliver the gift is not provided in the gift order is disclosed. The gift order is placed by a purchaser at a client system and received by a server system. The server system receives purchaser information including identification of the purchaser, payment information, as well as recipient information. In response to the recipient information not including sufficient information so that the gift can be delivered to the recipient, the server system obtains delivery information for the gift order from one or more sources other than the gift giver and recipient. The server system directs the gift to be delivered to the recipient as indicated by the delivery information in response to sufficient delivery information being obtained.

If we read this correctly, Amazon essentially owns the rights to look someone up in the phone book in order to deliver a gift ordered by another party. Just in time for the injunction-giving season!