Google Patents Searching Through Multiple Categories At Once

from the this-is-non-obvious? dept

Every week, when new patents are issued, I usually scan through various patents issued to certain companies. Each week, Microsoft usually has somewhere between 40 to 60 new patents. On the other hand, Google has some weeks where they get no patents at all. At most, I think I've seen weeks where Google received three or four new patents. And, of course, to Google's credit, the company has not been aggressive in using its patent portfolio offensively. As far as I know, Google has never sued another company over patents, though there could be cases I do not know about. Yet, that doesn't mean that sometimes a patent issued to the company raises questions. Last week, Google's one patent is for an "interface for a universal search engine." Basically, the company seems to have patented the ability to search through multiple databases at once (say, a web database, a news database and an images database) and present all the results together on a single page.

What's unclear to me is how anyone "skilled in the art" could consider this a non-obvious solution. This is (and was) the sort of evolutionary improvement that pretty much anyone in the space would have known was coming to search engines. It hardly seems deserving of a patent. My guess is that Google gets these sorts of patents more for defensive purposes, and probably (hopefully?) isn't likely to sue other companies that do something similar. However, just the fact that Google had to spend time, money and effort in securing such a patent seems like a waste of resources.

Filed Under: patents, search engine
Companies: google

Search Engine Cache Isn't Copyright Infringement

from the good-news-for-search-engines dept

There are some out there who have suggested that search engines such as Google and Yahoo are basically just massive copyright violators, because they scan, index and keep an archive of websites. That copied archive (usually called a cache) is, according to these commenters, an unauthorized copy. Now a court has basically destroyed that argument, noting that putting content online is giving an implicit license for search engines to index and copy. The lawsuit also claimed that individuals who visited the cached version were also infringers -- but the court also rejected that argument, claiming that the implied license extends to those users. The only part of the case that seems to be moving forward is whether or not this implicit license was broken after the lawsuit started and search engines still didn't take down the content. The idea there was that any explicit notification by the content holder might override the implicit license -- and thus search engines should have taken down the content as soon as the lawsuit started (thus signaling an explicit revoke of the license). Of course, the whole thing seems pretty silly. If the guy didn't want his content indexed, he should learn what a robots.txt file is for.

Filed Under: cache, copyright, search engine
Companies: google, microsoft, yahoo

EU Gives France Permission To Waste Even More Money On Mythical Google Killer

from the yo-quaero-taco-bell dept

It's been nearly two years since we pointed out that the EU's "Quaero" project appeared to be nothing more than a scam to trick clueless bureaucrats into funnelling tons of money into private companies hoping they would somehow create a "Google-killer." There were no plans. There was no website. There was no technology. There was merely a bunch of random companies all saying they would do something vague, if only the government gave them money. Well, the EU has now granted the wish, giving France permission to distribute $152 million to a bunch of companies. Note, again, that they're not giving this money to some startup that thinks it has a Google killer. In fact, everyone admits that the various companies involved all have divergent interests. In other words, this money is going into a black hole where it will be spent on whatever each company wants to spend it on. The idea that a Google-killer will emerge is laughable. Just the fact that it's been many years since the project was first proposed and they're just getting around to funding it now should give you a sense of how backwards this plan is. You don't create a Google-killer by announcing such plans, getting a bunch of big companies to line up for a handout and then taking years to actually give out way more money than is needed.

Filed Under: boondoggle, eu, france, google killer, quaero, search engine