Today I sent the rest of the fee to the USPTO

Many thanks to everyone who helped out with the funding and promoting the blog.

Please don't send any more money

(unless you want to contribute to my personal consumption ;-) ).

But please consider submitting any prior art you have found.

If everything goes to plan, this is what should happen next:

(1) The USPTO will receive the fee and assign a filing date to the request.

(2) Within 3 months of the filing date (but hopefully sooner) the USPTO will
decide whether to reexamine the patent.

If they do decide to reexamine, Amazon's lawyers will have had the luxury of an almost 6 month head start to prepare their counter-arguments, but that goes with the territory of having to assemble the fee from scratch.

I will keep this blog updated with developments.

Thank you again to everyone who helped get this far.