Scraping resistant system and method for placing orders through an internet shopping service

• US 10,360,543 B2
• Filed: 04/23/2012
• Issued: 07/23/2019
• Est. Priority Date: 04/23/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: GrubHub Inc.
• Original Assignee: GrubHub Inc.
• Inventors: McCartney, Daniel John, Leiseca, Michael Gabriel, Bowersock, Ryan Robert, Kent, John Saxton, Battle, Jacob Lyman, Evnin, Joshua, Zivin, Rhiannon Sterling, Maloney, Matthew
• Primary Examiner(s): Hewitt, II, Calvin L
• Assistant Examiner(s): Zhou, Yingying
• Application Number:
  US13/453,159
• Publication Number:
  US 20130282516A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,647 Days
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/12 specially adapted for electronic shopping systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0631 Item recommendations
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 50/01 Social networking
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/60 Scheduling or organising the servicing of application requests, e.g. requests for application data transmissions using the analysis and optimisation of the required network resources admission control or resource allocation H04L47/70

Abstract

A third-party server exposes a first set of data from a content based website. Access to a second set of data requires that a token be assigned to a specific web browser and corresponding to a specific subset of protected data, the token containing no information that can be used to gain access to other protected data.

Claims

1. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing one or more instructions which, when executed by one or more processors of an API server, causes the one or more processors to perform:

receiving an update message from a third-party server, the update message including an API key of the third-party server and a timestamp;

providing, using the received timestamp, an information feed to the third-party server, the information feed including a first set of information associated with a service;

receiving a first message from the third-party server, the first message including a first merchant identifier associated with the service of additional information, and the API key identifying the third-party server;

generating a first token, mapping the first token to the first merchant identifier associated with the service and to the API key of the third-party server, storing the mapping in a mapping database of a plurality of tokens to merchant identifiers associated with services of additional information and API keys of third-party servers;

sending a second message to the third-party server including the first token;

receiving, from a web browser, a request for the additional information, wherein the request includes a second token;

comparing the second token in the request with the plurality of tokens in the mapping database;

determining a second merchant identifier corresponding to the second token in the mapping database, and

either sending the additional information corresponding to the second merchant identifier to the web browser, or

identifying a third-party partner using a second API key of the second token and sending to the web browser additional information of a third merchant with an additional data corresponding to the second merchant identifier.

2. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 1, wherein the first token is a string of random alphanumeric characters.

3. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 1, wherein the first token is a random length.

4. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 1, wherein the first token corresponds uniquely to both the API key and the first merchant identifier.

5. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 1, wherein the first merchant identifier is a restaurant identifier.

6. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 1, wherein the API server receives the request for additional information from the web browser without passing through the third party server.

7. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 1, wherein the first set of information includes a listing of restaurants and the additional information is a menu for a particular restaurant associated with the first merchant identifier.

8. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 1, further comprising:

in response to determining that the request is not for the second merchant identifier the second token in the request maps to, dropping the request received from the web browser.