On Tuesday Amazon was granted a business method patent, first filed for approval way back in the pre-Kindle days of July 2004, that covers the sale of book previews and excerpts. The complex filing also includes various scenarios for giving customers “personal viewer” discounts and credits in return for reading certain promotional excerpts, as well as schemes to vary preview fees “dependent on the work being viewed and/or the consumer’s prior purchase or previewing activity.” For now there’s no basis for concluding that this is something the etailer plans to implement, and the original filing is so old that it’s […]