The US patent system is broken anyway, so who cares? It still seems likely that they stole stuff. Google used the same quadtree numbering as Art and Com, that being a coincidence is very unlikely
Have you looked at the patents in question? Here they are: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]. 1,2,4, and 5 are absurdly broad, obvious, almost certainly were preceded by basic networking functions, and should not have been granted in the first place. The third is possibly novel so I'll grant them that. This whole case is a great example of the ridiculousness of software patents in the modern USPTO system.
If google really has a patent on that home page, I'd suspect it is a design patent, which is an entirely different kind of beast. It's more like trademark rights.
Let us not forget when Google tried to patent an algorithm for Assymetric Numeral Systems developed by an academic scientist with intent of making it available in a public domain. Seems like this kind of practice is more common with Google than one might think.
Isn't PageRank patented and therefore public? I believe the patent is held by Stanford and exclusively licensed to Google.
Of course, Google's search algo has evolved considerably from the early Stanford days and is secret.
I'd prefer that to patents in most cases, though. Trade secret law should be good enough for most things. And I think if it's not, then it shouldn't be patentable. If I can figure out how to make a decent multi-touch UI just by taking 10 minutes and playing with a device that has one, that feels unpatentable to me.
I hope their greed gets the best of them. Here's a poll I created to get general feedback on this subject. It's so infuriating to me, but a lot of people seem to be indifferent on the subject of patents: http://www.wepolls.com/p/3363896/
If this is the one, then this is an unbelievably broad patent. I encourage everyone to at least skim through this thing, it is incredible that this can constitutes a valid patent.
The way that patent system in this country works for software patents is wrong, period. If it is this easy for someone to get sued then it should be made easier to fight back against these type of lawsuits.
At least doctors can get medical malpractice insurance to protect against the liability of losing a frivolous lawsuit. Software developers are on their own.
(Software patents should be abolished. I just like to point out their absurdity and how it's easy to independently develop a technique (steganography in a search engine result) that someone has already grubbed a "patent" on.)
It's not a Google patent. The article link is just a link to patents.google.com, which is a Google search engine for patents not a list of patents owned by Google.
Not a lawyer, but this seems to be conflating patents with copyrights?
i.e. iOS (especially new versions) would fall under copyright protection [0].
PageRank is a patented technique for search. The patent apparently ran out about 6 weeks ago [0].
While both copyright and patents are intended to protect creators for a certain period of time, copyright protects a specific work and patents protect an idea. Patents should generally expire much more quickly since they cover a much broader topic.
I also realize both systems are completely crippled at the moment, but I'm trying to stick to what they're at least intended to be.
What about misappropriated code? Patents seem like it would be a much more simple situation.
reply