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Google Patents the Design of Search Results Page
prostoalex writes "ZDNet is reporting that USPTO issued a patent to Google, Inc. for 'ornamental design for a graphical user interface'. This is not, as ZDNet points out, a software patent (which is usually issued as a utility patent), but a design patent, which governs the look and feel of the product and prevents others from directly copying it." Ironic, given Google's recent slip-up of copying a Yahoo page. In news on the flipside, Google has launched a patent search service (in beta).
Except occasionally.
should not exist.
that's what's copyright is for!
34486853790
Connection too slow for X forwarding? Try "ssh -CX user@host"
Weren't "look and feel" patents prohibited in Lotus vs Borland? I thought this matter was settled long ago.
Uh Oh... too bad
In theory a problem for all the "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em (*ahem* confuse 'em?)" school of search destinations, but.. Google will never enforce the patent, so its probably moot...
----
graphically speaking
graphically speaking
Sorry - I already patented putting words on blank web pages. Also graphics on blank web pages. I took out a 3rd patent on putting some combination of words and graphics together on a blank web page.
The entire content of the World Wide Web is in violation of my patent rights. E-mail me for the address to which you may send payments.
Assholes.
1 in 4 Maine children in struggle with hunger.
http://www.google.com/patents?q=slashdot&btnG=Sear ch+Patentsa tentsl ya tents
http://www.google.com/patents?q=wtf&btnG=Search+P
http://www.google.com/patents?q=peanut+butter+jel
http://www.google.com/patents?q=drm&btnG=Search+P
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
Can't they give a linked list of vertical or horizontal ads or banners? What exactly has google patented?
"Design" is a dangerous word to use here, since it seems to me that what we're
really talking about it "organization". Afterall Google's result pages are
about as graphics-lite as a page can possibly be. Furthermore, they're affected
by client-side issues from screen-size to font settings. So the look of
the results page is in many ways a matter of client side rendering.
So I'm guessing we're talking about patenting the "organization" of data, and not
the specific visual identity of the search results themselves. So.... I'm not sure
I see the originality here. Google's advantage over previous-generation browsers
was ultimately speed and a kickass search & pagerank algorithm. But ultimately
the organization of the results doesn't seem entirely dissimilar from other
search engines.
And since this wasn't awarded a "utility" patent, we know we're not talking about
anything that has functional value -- just "visual originality". Take away
the Google logo and IMHO there's a whole lot of "visual originality" to the
results.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
an idea!
It struck me as kind of interesting, the notion of looking up patents. But I was wondering if that kind of stuff would also be the area of the Wikipedia. From an entertainment point of view, the art work of the patent might be interesting. I think that the prior art thing might be easier to consider if more people could respond; Maybe from a "common public good" viewpoint, this could prove to be helpful for everyone. Just a thought, but I am wondering if there would be value in seeing what patents have been registered in other countries?
This is almost news! !!
This is Slashdot and not Fark where people go for news and journalism.
I want my FUD and politics, dammit!!!
I don't believe this.
Years ago, there were Lotus 1-2-3 clones, which copied not only the general visual appearance but the actual menu layout, sequences, names, and functionality.
One of the more famous was literally named "Carbon Copy." That was the product name. Really.
Lotus took the company to court and lost. IIRC The court ruled that it was OK to copy the look, feel, and details of the Lotus product's menus, because there was no other way to produce a competitive product.
How the heck can a perfect functional duplicate of a complete menu tree be OK, but a vague organization of elements on a web screen be copyrightable?
This is not a case of Google being evil (although they are), this is a case of a sea change in what the United States is willing to grant IP protection to.
But at least it was the Google News screen. I was afraid maybe they'd gotten a patent on the spare, lean, mean Google Search screen and that it would now be compulsory for everyone else to have a cluttered web page.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
The Google patent search beta could be big news. If anybody can get relevant patent search results out of that mass of legal speak, it's Google. I expect it wouldn't constitute a legally valid patent search but it could be Very Helpful.
= hjwMAAAAEBAJ&dq=swinging+on+a+swing
= OfwkAAAAEBAJ&dq=exercising+a+cat
The usual favorites:
http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT6368227&id
http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT5443036&id
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
According to Googlel, the best way to ascertain how evil you are is to take a quiz. As far as this quiz is concerned, your stance on software patents has nothing to do with it.
Really though, Google's "do no evil" schtick is just a bunch of crap^H^H^H^H marketing gibberish. Google does page rank really well, and sells lots of ad sense. They have hired lots of smart people. Try to get Google to delete your gmail. Try to get Google out of China. Try to get Google to take an ethical stance on software patents or copyrights. Just what did Google do, exactly, that makes anyone think they deserve the moral high ground. I can't think of a single thing, other than they don't suck as hard as MS. Yet.
It's time for people to stop inhaling all the smoke Google is blowing.
(I meant "patentable," not "copyrightable." Of course)
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Lockheed Martin are ripping off Willy Wonka!!
Proof!
Design fits, but unfortunately, you are referring to the unfortunate connotation that design is only about aesthetics, which is an extremely limited scope.
Hear Hear!
What I want to know is what happens when they make a change to their page. Does that get covered too and all other (previous) versions not covered?
After all, when you patent something, then change it you have to get another patent to cover the changes (keeps the lawyer-monkies busy).
Rendering definitely has effects on overall design 'look & feel'.
Copyright should be the issue, all others: natch....
God: When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.
On the subject of them "copying" a Yahoo page:
Has anyone thought that maybe, just maybe, that's a template provided by Microsoft? You know, since it's pitching the IE7 upgrade and all that.
From the article,
Quote "And I've checked with our PR group to make sure that this wasn't just a template that Microsoft gave to all partners. It's not." Unquote.
Google will never enforce the patent, so its probably moot...
That's the fanboy defense. Google will never enforce till they are doing well.
But the moment, Google starts making loses, starts getting screwed by some competitor,
I am sure the option of using the patent will look good.
http://www.chemie.fu-berlin.de/chemnet/use/info/gc c/gcc_4.html
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Guess that's just marketing BS...
I bet they're also trying to pantent the concept of "releasing beta products for widespread usage".
This one really looks like it should be protected by copyright instead:= i4UVAAAAEBAJ&pg=PP1&zoom=4&dq=google&ie=ISO-8859-1
http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPATD506475&id
Another proof that big corporations use their cash to patent everything they can.
Patents 1 - 10 of 75 on cock sucker. (0.00 seconds)
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Since so many people are confused as to what a design patent is :http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_patent
And for those of you too lazy to even click: "In the United States, a design patent is a patent granted on the ornamental design of a functional item. Design patents are a type of industrial design right. Ornamental designs of jewelry, furniture, beverage containers (see Fig. 1) and computer icons are examples of what can be protected with design patents."
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Looking at the images in the actual patent, this actually seems to specifically cover how they present travel, product, and news results on top of the regular search results.
I'm not 100% sure, since I can't seem to get to a technical description, just the pictures. But this isn't a patent on the design of general search results pages.
*runs for the hills*
This is great. It is much faster than the US patent office site and you can see the text of old patents. I was easily able to find and read a 1919 patent by my wife's grandfather. For fun check out this patent: Number 219628.
No, not at all. Quite the opposite. I clarified the term
design to having two potential meanings aesthetics and
form ("organization"). Then I expressed my *opinion* that
in terms of "form" I do not believe that Google has
significantly differentiated themselves from their
competitors.
Kapisch?
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Does this mean the end for Booble?
It is particularly comfortable to sit on and is very suitable for walking around on. Moreover My ass(TM) is distinctive and totally unlike any other ass. As I am fond of My Ass(TM) and I don't particularly feel like paying royalties for using it, one of those fancy defensive patents may be in order.
nt
Support the FairTax
Unfortunately the courts have no clear opinion on this. Lotus vs Borland made it all the way to the Supreme Court but was split 4-4 with one justice recusing himself.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
Will http://www.thotbott.com/ be getting a cease and decist or similar friendly e-mail from Google?
tard.
You all are complaining about patenting look and feel, but there is a very important difference between what has been done, and things like Lotus.
Lotus had a utility patent on their look and feel.
Google has an "ornamental design" patent on their look and feel.
Utility patents cover methods and processes
Design patents cover look and only look.
In other words, to infringe a utility patent, you have to do the same thing in the same way (this is vastly simplified).
To infringe a design patent, you have to make something that looks *exactly the same*.
They really shouldn't even be called patents.
They just aren't that interesting.
Lotus attempted to stop anyone from making menus that performed the same processes and actions as their menus by using a utility patent.
If Lotus had only gotten a design patent on their menus, they wouldn't have even had a case because Borland's menus don't look the same.
You can't get a design patent on something like using keystrokes to perform an action, since it's not a look.
When searching for a patent you don't want ANYONE to know even remotely what you are thinking. By using a Google supplied tool you are subject to Google reviewing your searches. You'd be saying: "hey google here's kinda what my patent is" and they'd say "thanks we'll look at what you're thinking is a unique and private idea". Even Patent Attorneys use secure patent search services that contain a database of the downloadable USPTO data. They don't even trust the USPTO admins....so if you're going to a private company and doing a search you're saying to them "here have my idea". Deee deee dee.
This is particularly about Yahoo, but to a lesser extent about Microsoft. Every single time there's a story about Google doing something which seems to quite obviously go against most peoples' definitions of their "Do no evil" motto half the posts will bring up something (arguably) worse done by Yahoo, or sometimes Microsoft. How about the notion of evaluating an action by its own merits instead of always comparing to the competition? In the context of a discussion about Google I don't care if "Yahoo does it too" etc. what I care about is what Google did, and why/why not that is a good thing for them and for us. Bringing Yahoo into every debate about questionable actions by Google is like saying "But we're still better than China" every time free speech is trampled in the US, it makes no sense, we don't want to compare ourselves to the bottom of the barrel, we want to compare ourselves to the best. The same should go for Google, if Google wants to be held in as high esteem as they currently are, they should be compared to the best and their actions taken for what they are, instead of the tired old "Yahoo did it too" posts.
Jesus Christ said that in the same manner that you give, it will be given TO you, and by the very same measure. I wonder if anybody at Google's legal staff has a notion of that.
He also said that if somebody sues you for your shirt, give them your cloak as well. I guess that's his way of saying "have nothing to do with the law" and "give in to all confrontations (to gain rightesness)", "to be righteous while the LORD fights your battles".
Its a strange set of beliefs, actually, and I don't know if I've ever met anybody who actually keeps them in all cases.
That being said, if I were going to throw that all aside and use a legal argument, I'd say this:
The patent system was developed by the public for the benefit of the public. The idea was to compensate inventors for good ideas, thereby encouraging publically beneficial innovation. It was NOT developed to grant petty monopolies and arbitrary legal chokeholds to anyone who could afford to register a shabby patent + "defend" it in court.
There is no INHERENT RIGHT to keep a monopoly on ANY idea. Public law, as an expression of the public interest / preference / goodwill (towards innovators/innovation), is what grants that temporary monopoly. It makes no sense to use the law, PUBLIC law, at the public's expense...there can certainly be exceptions, but this case is probably not one of them, since it sounds like the patent is crooked.
I've actually gone through phases of innovation, and, believe it or not, it was the process of searching existing patents that seemed most daunting. There are TONS of them.
You think that legal patents actually HELP innovation? Stop and imagine, now, if you'd just come up with a new idea, a new type of car, for instance, and some clown patented the "L" bracket, and some other clown patented the straight bracket, and some other clown patented using flat sheets of metal or plastic to form a protective-barrier / aka "wall", etc, etc, etc... Now let's say you get that car made, and each and every one of those clowns decides to have a circus with your new car. Hmm. That doesn't sound like innovation to me. Not at all. It sounds like a bunch of lawyers harrassing an inventor. It sounds like a huge HINDRANCE to innovation, unless you're prepared to buy clown brand "L" brackets, clown brand straight brackets, and clown brand sheet metal/plastic.
Well, fortunately, the hypothetical case IS hypothetical, since brackets and sheet metal are past the protected patent phase, and can be purchased for not too too much. However, there could still be cases where those conditions could apply.
Software patents, in particular, are a good case in point. Most good software engineers would be able to come up with good solutions to the same problem. Eventually, the good solutions could (possibly) all be enumerated.
Stop and consider, then, what if they'd granted a patent for all possible implementations of (1) the array, a patent for the (2) linked list, (3) hashtable, etc. (all the things in your data structures book) Now you want to write a piece of code that does ANYTHING, and YOU KNOW how to write a linked list, but some clown patented it, and he'd SUE you for rewriting it. Now you have to use his patent, or don't innovate at all. And he wants a fortune to use his patent of the linked list.
See? In that hypothetical case, the patent(s) STIFFLE innovation, and BLOCK progress. In that hypothetical case, NOT granting the patent results in GREATER innocation.
Perhaps there are cases, and perhaps there have been times in history, when patent policy should have been something other than what it is today, or visa versa, but it seems to me that the role of patents in blocking innovation should be just as much a consideration (when deciding patent policy) as the role of patents in "incentivising" innovation.
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
This is sickening. "I thought of it first!" "Yours looks just like mine!" Greed, greed, greed! It's almost like a bunch of little, immature, selfish kids. "I called it!" "It's mine!"
I really wonder if the world might not be better off without copyrights and patents. So what if it cut into record sales, and so what if some guy in his garage couldn't get exclusive rights to the next can opener? Maybe musicians would make a living from performing, or maybe they'd make music as a hobby, or maybe they'd have patrons that would sponsor them. Maybe inventors would still sell their inventions to companies, or maybe they'd be consultants to those companies, or maybe they'd start their own companies. Maybe people would hoard their ideas a bit, or maybe they'd have a more open, sharing attitude. But at least if you had something in your hands in front of you, or on your screen in front of you, there wouldn't be a stupid piece of paper rubber-stamped by a stupid, bored clerk that said that you couldn't make one too. Geez, if everyone had to think of everything from scratch, we wouldn't even have gotten to the stone age!
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
The world may never know. It could go either way, because if everyone was free to use everything, without regard for copying others' work, then the "good guys" who didn't copy others would still be just as free to make their quality work. Maybe they'd have to get their income from other sources. Maybe more people would spend time creating content rather than just consuming it. Maybe TV commercials and a lot of advertising would go away. My, what a shame that would be!
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
---http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/FAQ from General Questions, 1998
When Tim Berners-Lee *invented* the Web, he deliberately deigned not to pin down a look and feel for it. Each browser would render it in their own way. He merely wanted a way to deliver Internet data in such a way that it *could be* perceived in an organized fashion.
From this perspective, Google's design patent, while making perfect *corporate sense*, is like a spike in the heart of Tim's vision. It is a perfect example of the Tragedy of the Commons. They have fenced out a little area for themselves, and are smugly defending it against all comers, using the monopoly power of the State to do so. I suppose that it is perfectly legal -- but that doesn't make it right.
Q: What do you think of the commercial turf wars going on the Web?
A: There has always been a huge competition to come out with the best Web technology. This has followed from the fact that the standards, being open, allow anyone to experiment with new extensions. This produces the threat of fragmentation into many Webs...and we [need to] think very carefully about both the technology and the laws we make or change around it.
---http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/FAQ from General Questions, 1998
Well, it's not like he didn't see it coming. It's still a pity.
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.