Slashdot Mirror
Overture To A Patent War?
Shackleford writes "CNET has an article discussing Yahoo's proposed $1.63 billion buyout of commercial search specialist Overture Services on Monday. Yahoo would acquire 60-plus patents related to technology and processes for indexing the Web, as well as for pay-per-click and bidding systems to grant sites higher placement in search results. The search market is expected to be reap $4 billion in revenue by 2005, according to researchers. As the industry matures, the competition for a piece of that large pie could lead companies to bulk up their IP legal teams, much like in other industries such as online advertising sales during the dot-com bust. And Overture sued FindWhat.com in February 2002 after FindWhat filed a summary judgment request in a New York federal court in an attempt to fend off any potential infringement charge from Overture. Two months later Overture filed a second lawsuit, charging Google with patent infringement in its pay-for-performance ad system. So is this the way the search engine competition will be won? Through patents and lawsuits?"
So is this the way the search engine competition will be won? Through patents and lawsuits?"
I would say yes since the technological battle was won by Google a while back.
The new motto of business: If you can't compete: Litigate!
Lawbooks are the new Market Cornering Tool. We can't find new business models to innovate with, so we'd rather sit around the country and sue each other into oblivion..
This country is in for some major comeuppance in the next couple decades.. Its gonna get NASTY.. Just you watch..
In the post .com era, with soaring spam (with half the sites they advertise not working, and random crap in the messages to avoid filters), huge flash adverts in the middles of pages, and sites going under every day, don't be suprised to see companies scraping by every way possible. Afterall, lawsuits and patent infringements, are practically the only source of real revenue. How many banner ad clicks does it take to get $1,000,000 ?
In other words:
Steal
Patent
Sue
???
Profit!
Every time one of these lawsuits is filed, there's another chance for a judge to say, "this is stupid, goodbye patent".
Karma: Food Fight (Mostly affected by Date Plate).
This is one of the many reasons Americans are hated throughout the world - The American way. The worse thing that ever happened to the world was when the US became the only Superpower. Your politicians are sooooo bought (remember campaign finance reform). It's sad and whats worse is you ram this crap down the rest of the world's throat.
Declaratiuon of Independance
When was the last time you actually read it and understood how and why its the publics right and duty to correct such injustices?
Lexmark wasn't a DMCA case -- straightforward copyright infringement.
The biggest threat to R.E. these days, however, is the Federal Circuit opinion in Bowers v. Baystate.
Ahh, I love how you think you know what drives me. I don't hate Gates/MS for that reason. I hate them because they ruthlessly destroy any and all competition, and push a bloated, security-hole-ridden product on everyone. I also hate them because they make no effort to educate people to be TRULY computer literate. Microsoft wants nothing more than for the current status quo to continue indefinitely-- that is, for people to go to school and learn (by rote) the top 10 most common things they'll need to do in Office, the top 10 most common things they'll need to do in IE, and so on, then claim that they are "computer literate". Is it any wonder that MS keeps its stranglehold on the public admiration when they so love to keep their users in the dark?
MS might be (and they might not be.. remember the Apple II?) the reason why every Tom, Dick and Harry has a computer and an Internet connection (again, remember that MS was late to the game in "discovering" the Internet! Uh, remember Netscape? Before IE came around, it was the big "innovator", before it turned sour...), but they are also the reason why many Web sites nowadays will not render correctly in any browser except Microsoft's, why virtually every game nowadays is coded only for Microsoft's OS, and why Microsoft is rapidly pushing their ever-multiplying tendrils into the mobile phone, handheld PC, embedded OS, and even the bloody video game console markets.
Incidentally, if you doubt my comments about keeping users in the dark, just LOOK at the default (Luna) interface in Windows XP. It looks like it was designed for a preschooler-- right down to the freaking "Little People"-esque icons. Not only does MS want to keep its users dumb, but it's patronizing them. The first thing I had to say upon seeing Luna was "It's 'Fisher Price's 'My First OS''!"...
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
So is this the way the search engine competition will be won? Through patents and lawsuits?
Yes, because sadly, that is the American way.
Look, I know that /. users love Google beyond the point of rationality, but if you look at the facts, you'll see that Overture is getting unreasonably slammed in this post.
(1) Overture invented the sponsored link industry over 5 years ago. When they started it, they were labelled as being both greedy and stupid (the former because they employed auctions for keywords, the latter because no one thought the idea would work).
(2) Overture filed for patent an the basic ideas, and invested years into making sponsored links work. Guess what? It does work, to the tune of $2B this year.
(3) Google blatently copied the entire business model AFTER Overture invested millions of $ and years of efforts. In fact, Google copied the whole thing AFTER Overture sought to partner with them.
(4) Overture distributes the sponsored links to partners with a revenue share. Google is cutting distribution deals that are non-economic (basically, they are using a monopoly in search to supplement their losing ad system).
(5) People, distribution affiliates, and advertisers all like the results. Make fun of them all you will, but Overture's ads consistantly score higher than Google's on relevance tests.
So, hate patents all you want, but let's be clear about a few things: paid search is keeping the internet alive today. Overture invented the industry and it is the reason why search is now a viable business. Google blatently copied it.
Now, which is the "evil" company?