Channel Intelligence patents the Wish List

On Dec 28, 2001, Channel Intelligence filed a patent covering the "invention provides a method for configuring a database system to store information regarding a plurality of items." Translation? They patented the idea of storing a list of items in a database on the Internet. Huh?

Apparently, they have now decided to sue some ecommerce sites for having "wish lists" on their site. So they invented the wish list?

Forgetting for a second that Amazon was doing it long before everyone, those of us at Trilogy during the dotcom bubble will remember that IveBeenGood.com was offering wish list functionality in October 1999, more than 2 years before the Channel Intelligence patent was filed.

You can see the actual patent here. It's pretty ridiculous.