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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).
Weren't "look and feel" patents prohibited in Lotus vs Borland? I thought this matter was settled long ago.
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.
"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 : )
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
14 years vs. longer than our lifetime (there is stuff from my year of birth, 1982, that will not make public domain until long after my death). Hmmmm, let me think on that. Also, the design patents cover a lot of things that copyright and trademark were never meant to cover.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
Google will never sue over patents for the same reasons no software giants sue over patents. Because everyone is violating them. Google sues Microsoft and Yahoo, Microsoft and Yahoo sue right back. If Google or Microsoft, or whoever, is "not doing well" a stupid move like getting sucked into patent litigation would just be finishing off the job.
You did not think that through all the way.
Google will sue over software patents the second that the income they could expect to get from those lawsuits exceeds the income they expect to gain from their software. Right now they feel that building their software portfolio is a much better revenue stream, but that does not mean that things cannot change.
That's why the only people you see initiating patent lawsuits are these little patent clearinghouses that buy up patents from small software companies, but don't own any IP. That way they can sue over patent violations, without having any IP that can be sued back for patent violations.
Right, but do the math. Creating software is significantly more expensive (and fraught with uncertainty regarding future income) than licensing a patent. If Office and Windows sales dropped so low that MS felt it could get more money by not selling any more software and instead using it's vast patent portfolio to export money from those who do produce software, doing so would be a no-brainer.
Finkployd
Since we're linking to Jeremy's blog post, I thought it might be worth while to also post Matt Cutts blog regarding this 'drama'. Matt acknowledges Googles mistake (and by Google, we mean a person(s) working for Google who first, thought copying a Yahoo! page was a good idea and 2) got through management approval to let it go live.)
Matt also points out, probably more interesting, how Yahoo! is not entirely innocent when it comes to 'copying' what the competitor does. However, the comments on his page have an interesting discussion of which is truly worse? Copying UI/Layout/Design or Graphics/Layout/Design.
This is a tough call for me (as a web programmer/developer). I can kind of go both ways on this one. Patents and such are always a difficult concept to talk about. On one hand, they protect inventor and innovators, while on the other hand they're a forced 'legal' monopoly of "If they make it, you cannot make it too". As an inventor, I'd hate to create something, be original, and have it copied. As an average everyday person, I'd hate for one company to control a product and prevent natural competition.
In this sense, I cannot agree with myself on this situation. A photographer buys a Hamburger at a popular fast-food chain. Takes it home and opens it up and takes a photograph of it. A 2nd photographer see this photo (on the 1st photographers website) takes a hamburger from the same food-chain, and shoots a drastically similar photograph (the pickle is on the other side). A 3rd photographer cooked his own hamburger, and decided to take a photo of it, and has never seen photographer 1 or 2's photos, and his photo turns out to be almost the exact same image of the 1st photographer. Who's right? Who's wrong? Has a 'crime' (either moral, ethical, artistic, respectful, or legal) been committed?
Regarding the Google vs Yahoo!, it raises another question... online media. Graphics/Photos (JPG, GIFs, PNGS, etc) are protected, but what about UI? Layout? Coding practices? If it 'looks' the same on a monitor, is it not like being a Photo? After all, I can take a screen-capture and make it one easily. So, should it be equally worse to copy ones layout or design? Or even use similar or the same color palettes?
If I spend hours of time and money in R&D for the perfect usable interface, should my 'innovation' also be protected, the same as if I took the time to take a photo of something? After all, a layout/design is artistically placed in the same manner a photographer or painter choose the placement of objects in their shot and a designer chooses their color and brightness the same as a photographer or painter chooses theirs.
Cheers,
Fozzy
"The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth." ~1984 George Orwell
I've never heard of Carbon Copy. The only lawsuit I know of over a product with the degree of copying of 1-2-3 that you refer to is Lotus v. Paperback Software over VP-Planner, which Lotus won, on copyright grounds.
The court in Lotus v. Paperback actually ruled the exact opposite, on the basis of the fact that there were successful competing products that didn't do that.
Patents are not copyrights and are governed by different law. The reason people seek these kinds of patents now is that efforts to use copyright to protect general look and feel and short of fairly exact copying (such as that at issue in Lotus v. Paperback) failed in the 1980s and 1990s, (e.g., in Apple vs. HP and Microsoft, and in Lotus v. Borland), which have led companies to seek different means of protecting this aspect of their product from copycats; I don't think is a case of a change in what the US is willing to grant IP protection for so much as a change in what companies are seeking a particular kind of IP protection for, as a direct result of the failure of a different kind of IP protection to protect it.