Amazon has been granted a US patent on Methods and systems of assisting users in purchasing items.

Amazon.com, the world’s largest online store and one of the most frequently-visited websites in the world, has been granted a U.S. patent on "Methods and systems of assisting users in purchasing items," including the use of gift-buying habits to determine the age, gender and birthday of gift recipients, according to a filing Tuesday with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

According to the patent, Amazon can now recommend gifts and gift ideas to its users, after they post the information on gift recipient. The occasion can be any including birthdays, valentine’s day, mother’s day, or thanksgiving Day. Amazon would also help its users remember important occasions such as birthdays and anniversaries. Most of the gifts it would recommend would be gender specific gifts. "For example, if the purchased toy is a dress for a doll, it may be inferred that the recipient is a girl," the patent states.

"The gender information may be used in determining which gift wrapping colors and patterns should be suggested when the item is being purchased as a gift. For example, if it is inferred that the recipient is a girl, pink or pastel colored gift wrapping may be suggested first."

The patent expounds on how can one use its services for making wiser decisions for giving away birthday gifts. For example, if someone gifts a tricycle to a 2 year old, then say after two years, the website will recommend a bicycle as then child will be too old to ride a tricycle. The birthday reminder service will help too.

Under conventional systems, "in order to receive birthday reminders, the customer has to actively provide the date of the birthday to the merchant," the filing says. "Many customers will not take the time to provide such birth dates, and so are deprived of receiving reminders."

The patent also lets Amazon see the kind of gift purchased. "If the item being ordered is perfume, and the date is one week before Valentine's Day, it may be inferred that the perfume is being purchased as a gift," the filing states.

When a user choose to send a gift around Valentine’s Day, then Amazon associate that it is a gift for the valentine, and send a suitable message along. Last month the Patent Office published Amazon's application for a patent on "server architecture and methods for persistently storing and serving event data," which describes the "personal search history" feature of Amazon's A9 search service.

On the similar lines, few days back, a patent was granted to Symantec for threat-detection technology.