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Overture Sues Google Over Pay-for-Placement Patent
Ana anonymous submitter wrote: "C|Net News is reporting that Overture is suing Google over its AdWords advertising method since it may be infringing upon Patent 6,269,361 'System and method for influencing a position on a search result list generated by a computer network search engine'."
"Basically we've analyzed the patent and determined that we do not infringe on any valid claim that it contains,"
Translation: Your patent sucks ass and we have the money to prove it.
Burn Hollywood Burn
How is "give us money and we'll rank you higher" an original contribution to art and science? It reminds me of the feminist character at the frat party at the end of PCU, with the dawning realization, "You mean, if you're nice to [males], they bring you stuff?"
It's days like this, where I'm almost ready to write my Senator and try and take an active role, that I look at the decisions being made and say to myself, fuck it, we're too late.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
I believe what they have patented is more of a business
model. Their proprietary algorithms are more in the
arena of fraud detection, people clicking on the same
$4 gambling link 100 times. These are kept as trade
secrets instead of being patented.
this is probably just another play for recognition. i had never heard of Overture before this, so i clicked the link to see what they were. woo.. another alta-yahoo-whatever. they're probably hoping to get the traffic, and maybe get some of google's loot if they're lucky.
Although I submitted a story (since rejected) about this, I'm looking for more info. Apparently, Comcast.net customers who try searching Google get the following message...
/search?hl=en&q=slashdot from this server. (Client IP address: *snip*)
403 Forbidden
Your client does not have permission to get URL
Unfortunately, Google has received a significant amount of abuse from your network. Because some person or people on your network have violated our Terms of Service (http://www.google.com/terms_of_service.html) and sent us numerous automated search queries, we have been forced to shut off access to Google's services from your network.
Note that we are not accusing you personally of having violated our Terms of Service; you are most likely an innocent victim of someone else's bad behavior. We're really sorry to have had to take this action.
We very much want to be able to work this problem out with your sysadmin or your ISP's network and/or abuse department. Unfortunately, so far, we have not been able to do so. Please contact your sysadmin or your ISP's network and/or abuse department and request that they track down who is causing this problem with Google. Please don't complain to Google about this problem (since there's nothing we can do until the problem on your network has been identified and stopped). Instead, please complain to your sysadmin or your ISP's network and/or abuse department. Letting them know that they need to take immediate action so that you can enjoy full access to the Internet (including Google) is the quickest way for you to regain your Google service.
We wholeheartedly apologize for the inconvenience to you, and with your help, we expect that we'll soon be able provide search results to you once more.
This has been confirmed by myself and 3 friends on Comcast.net. Anyone have more information? Please share with the class.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
'System and method for influencing a position on a search result list generated by a computer network search engine'.
Specifically, the patent covers a bidding process in which link owners compete in a bidding process to show which bids are highest. Though, in this case, Google is only using this data for the ads on the right sidebar of searches. GoTo.com used the bidding process to insert paid links within its regular search results. The free links would appear afterward.
The application of the technique is where this differs, but this is yet another case of an overly broad patent.
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
Just in case anyone forgot, see Subject. C|Net seems unaware, and refers to Overture as if they had always existed. But it's still the same Idealab-spawned dot-com-bubble outfit that sued Disney's Go.com for trademark infringment and won.
And they STILL haven't turned a profit.
Edith Keeler Must Die
If their results are based on how much the site pays, then under what circumstances would they produce more accurate hits than almost any other algorithm for ranking sites?
If no one uses them for searches, then why would web sites pay them money for listing?
I can't see how their business model would work, except if they can make money by suing others.
Ah, now I see how their business model works.
For the 99% of you who didn't read the references:
Overture isn't suing about Google's page rank results, nor do they claim that the ad results are part of the main search. They're saying that the adwords results in and of themselves constitute a pay-for-play search that infringes the patent.
Personally, I think it sounds like a desperation play of a dying company.
Yet another prime example of why patents shouldn't apply to software.
The entire software industry should kneel down and kiss the feet of IBM, Xerox, and other early software pioneers for not patenting every software related concept... the linked list, the hash table, binary sorts, bubble sorts, grouping data, grouping data and methods, batch processing... because if they had done so, computers would still be in large room in the basements of our universities & large corporations, with little application in our lives.
Just try and think of something that hasn't been affected by computers.
It is sickening to look at many software companies today... always looking for the path of least resistance, and never willing to claim responsibility for thier actions.
It sounds like someone patented the "corruption of the results of one's own search engine."
What the hell kind of patent is that?
:)
Did you even read the rest of it? The "influencing" they describe is by clients paying for their pages to rank higher in the regular search results, an automated system to bribe for better results, which Google explicitly does not do. Google's ads, which are kept seperate from regular search results, sorta work like this, but this patent really seems to be more relevant to messing with messing with links mixed in with actual search results.
i thing God can claim prior art on that invention.
yeah, but where do you think he's gonna find a lawyer in heaven?
jacob rothstein reed college
DEC brought up Alta Vista in 1995 and went public by at least 1996.
They started selling keywords fairly early on as well, which is a mechanism to affect the rank of the results. The only major difference between Alta-Vista's scheme and Google is that Google does it publicly.
The patent was filled in 1999 so prior art from 1998 invalidates it.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
This paragraph of the article is phrased badly. The concept of patenting a business method is not new. What's new is that USPTO and the courts are allowing these stupid things to stand.
The Supreme Court wrote a fabulous ruling about bad patents way back in 1950. I urge everyone to read the full ruling and see how utterly it applies to modern events. Here's a couple favorite quotes:
Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose
Send you letters to Overture expressing your outrage over this. I've fired them off a nasty-gram. You can contact them by emailing:
feedback@overture.com
Think about it, the "YELLOW" pages are pay for placement, while in the "WHITE" pages most listings are free, excepting businesses who pay extra high rates on thier local phone bill to have bold and two lines instead of one.
Hello! Does the addition of the word internet make this entirely different or something?
Internet adaptations of widely used ideas in print should not be pattented. The search engine just serves to filter the irrelevant from the relevant, something done in the yellow pages by "CATEGORIZATION", its just the with a search engine, the categorization is much more general and can be both a benifit and a detriment to the quality of the searching experience.
My 2cents, but I think I have a point here.
Spring is here. Don't believe me, look outside!
Wow. This is my first time looking at a patent, and you know what? It reminds me very much of every kind of half-assed spec my client handed me when I was a web programmer.
Read on for analysis:
The system and method of the present invention provides a database
Provides a database? How about "uses," "engages," "is dependent upon"? This usage of "provides" is so far out in left-field that it's almost backwards. And yet, I see this exact mistake a lot.
In addition, each account contains at least one search listing having at least three components: a description, a search term comprising one or more keywords, and a bid amount.
As always, input fields are detailed to a laughably meticulous degree. Not to mention, the usage of "comprising" is backwards. One or more keywords comprise a search term. A search term is composed of one or more keywords.
The network information provider enters the search term and the description into a search listing.
And the physical process of using the application is folded into the spec itself like it's some sort of revelation. "First, the user fires up the application." Woah, crucial info!
The rank value generated by the bidding process determines where the network information providers listing will appear on the search results list page that is generated in response to a query of the search term by a searcher located at a client computer on the computer network.
Meanwhile, the actual guts of the algorithm are never defined, instead replaced with tangential buzzwords like "client computer" and useless information about network topology.
This is the current state-of-the-art in spec, boys. This is why your programming job is hell.
(begin violation)
SELECT * FROM Matches ORDER BY BribeAmt DESC
(end violation)
Table-ized A.I.
Every patent is the grant of a privilege of exacting tolls from the public. The Framers plainly did not want those monopolies freely granted. The invention, to justify a patent, had to serve the ends of science - to push back the frontiers of chemistry, physics, and the like; to make a distinctive contribution to scientific knowledge. That is why through the years the opinions of the Court commonly have taken "inventive genius" as the test. * It [340 U.S. 147, 155] is not enough that an article is new and useful. The Constitution never sanctioned the patenting of gadgets. Patents serve a higher end - the advancement of science. An invention need not be as startling as an atomic bomb to be patentable. But it has to be of such quality and distinction that masters of the scientific field in which it falls will recognize it as an advance.
One is left to sadly wonder why things have fallen so low.
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
Webposition Gold is a fucking evil little piece of software used by marketing and advertising consultants to measure how Web sites are ranked on various search engines. It bombards the engines with automated queries in order to try to deduce -- and therefore defeat -- their ranking algoritithms.
Google hates that.
Someone on your block was probably using Webposition Gold, so your block got locked out.
Considering current USPTO policies, it may not be too late to patent these ideas. These innovations are still major opportunities for enterprising developers to generate licensing revenue and help stimulate our economy. I call first dibs on hashtables.
There was an article about Overture, I think on Slashdot, that had an interesting attack on spammers who use Overture's advertising. Go to their site overture.com and search for "bulk email" or some similar phrase like "opt-in email", and it'll give you a list of sites that are bidding some amount of money per web hit. The top three bidders for any given set of words also get advertised on several other search engines. Some spammers used to bid as much as $5 for hits, though the maximum today was down to like $2.75.
In the long run, attacks like this probably mainly result in loss of business for Overture :-), but meanwhile it's fun to have a simple method to beat up on some spammers.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The Patent Office isn't charged with ensuring that the patents are valid. Anyone who wants to contest them gets to do that. If you want the PO to ensure validity, you're going to need to give them a lot more funding than they get, since you need top-of-the-field experts in almost every domain to be hanging around.
May we never see th
It's days like this, where I'm almost ready to write my Senator and try and take an active role, that I look at the decisions being made and say to myself, fuck it, we're too late.
Actually, you're not too late... it's never too late to get law changed. Senators and congressmen do not need "prior art" to prove "pay me for top priotity" is not patentable because they've been doing that for decades!! That's way before the internet became common.
So there ya go.
If you purchase keywords on overture and are one of the top 3 bidders, you appear on all the sites they listed including Netscape. I can confirm this as I have a couple of listings online w/overture. They do appear on the netscape page in the section "Partner Search Results". (I also buy space on google.)
I believe the results below are the google results. The Google results do not have any advertisement content in them.
So, when overture says "when you buy space here, you get on x and x and x and x, but if you buy space at google you only get on google", they are exactly correct.
Try looking at the url on the "partner search results" on netscape.
(We won't mention that Driving Schools would very definately be listed prior to Pizza places, instead we'll assume you meant something like ZZZippy Ron's Driving School).
In the yellow pages you're right and your wrong.
In a category such as "Driving Schools", there are two independent pieces - the listings and the display ads. The Listings are usually in alphabetical order, sometimes by city. (Although I suspect some telephone directory publisher has at some point offered a premium "top of category" listing - but ignore that for a minute). Now the display ads in most directories are in order from largest to smallest. If you're the biggest ad in the section, you get first running in the section, or sometimes the choice of where you run. If you're the next biggest, you get second choice, etc.
Take a look at the display ads and note that they are most definately not in alphabetical order. Occasionally, you'll find a publisher will try to keep a smaller ad on the same page as the listing - but quite often not.
I think the key here is that there are definately pay per placement "prior arts". There are also definately prior arts related to almost anything computer related. The question here is whether the combination of using the "pay per placement" prior art with the "buy a keyword" prior art is both unique enought to be a valid patent, and also whether google's implentation differs enough from the overture prior art to require google to pay royalties to overture.