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Google Patents RSS Advertising
IO ERROR writes "Google filed a patent application for targeted advertising in RSS feeds about a year and a half ago. The USPTO has now assigned it a number and placed it online. The patent application covers both targeting in RSS feeds and geotargeting by IP address. It gives some insight into how Google's ad servers work."
...But I like the way google advertises. Whether it be in Gmail, in search results, or on Froogle. RSS is just another medium to explore. If they continue to stay unobtrusive, I wish them the best of luck.
I don't get it.
Can one really patent a medium? I'm not convinced that such a patent would stand up to what I'm sure would be numerous legal challenges. It is not as direct as attempting to patent advertising in other mediums (pick your poison), but it seems to be skirting the edge.
The patent system will collapse in a few years since patents are now being handed out to just about anyone willing to file for one. There is no more requirement for the patent to be non-obvious. The problem seems to be the examiners don't understand the fields for the patent applications they are responsible for. As an example, tying certain kinds of knots would be non-obvious to someone who doesn't use rope a lot, but that doesn't mean I should be able to patent the Monkey's Fist.
The end result of this is that, eventually, all patents will become meaningless. There will be large-scale infringement because so many patents will cover things that are so obvious that everyone will need to or want to do them. How many years from now will we enter this new era of ignoring the broken system? Frivolous patents are hastening the end of all patents.
I think we need to do something about this. Someone should form a non-profit organization to act as a holding company for patents. Then every Slashdot reader should file a patent for something fairly obvious and donate it to the NPO. Any large company claiming to have "defensive-only" patents should gladly contribute theirs as well. Then, once the NPO was stocked with a substantial number of high-value patents, they would run raids against the holdouts, saying "Give us YOUR patents or we will sue you into oblivion." After a few years of threatening letters and litigation, the NPO would have patents for every valuable bit of thought in the modern world! I'm sure such a dangerous entity would have very little trouble getting lawmakers to gut software patent laws altogether.
:-\
See, I woulda formatted this as a "1...2...3...4. Profit!" post, but it's an NPO I'm talkin' about.
The trouble with advertising is that it distorts the normal self-organizing tendency of people to value the best product and depreciate the worst. Do you honestly think the Bronze Age ended because the iron sword manufactures ran a worldwide advertising campaign boosting the advantages of iron?
"Is this Winkhorst a nova criminal?" "No just a technical sergeant wanted for interrogation."
An important claim of Google's patent application is targeting -- directing only certain ads at certain types of customers. I don't think /. did that, did they?
That doesn't work either - then you're advertising to your competitors what you're going to be launching in a year.
What would work is getting a patent accepted, launching your product, then making the patent public domain (as in, no-one ever has to pay a license for it, however you legally do that).
At the moment this rarely seems to happen - you get a company like Amazon who say that they get patents defensively, and that they'll only use them to stop direct competitors, please don't blame us, it's not our fault, it's the patent system and the legal system, etc.
Of course with a nebulous statement like that, then you have to hope that Amazon doesn't ever feel like suing you for patent infringement, or just don't use the tech involved in the patent. So most people avoid the disputed tech. So Amazon (and others) can claim that they're against patents, yet still work the system and get the benefits.