Google Patents Its Home Page

theodp writes "A week after new USPTO Director David Kappos pooh-poohed the idea that a lower patent allowance rate equals higher quality, Google was granted a patent on its Home Page. Subject to how the design patent is enforced, Google now owns the idea of having a giant search box in the middle of the page, with two big buttons underneath and several small links nearby. And you doubted Google's commitment to patent reform, didn't you?"

Comments

Evil.

[DoofusOfDeath]

That is all.

Re:Evil.

[Stile 65]

RTFS. It's a design patent, not a software (utility) patent.

Re:Evil.

[vandit2k6]

Or they could also just be covering their own ass up. There is a history of smaller companies suing larger companies just for the $$. I think Google doesn't want the hassle. That's just my opinion!

Re:Evil.

[yesteraeon]

That this is a stupid patent and may, in fact, be prior art, doesn't mean Google's motivations are nefarious. Indeed, if you are correct that it is prior art, then all the more reason for Google to apply for this patent even if they have no intention of enforcing it. If Google could receive the patent despite prior art (or lack of originality), then another organization could possibly have done the same thing and then turned around and sued Google. If you had billions to lose and were working in a broken patent system, you would apply for some dumb patents too, just to cover your ass.

Re:Evil.

[Mr. Slippery]

Or it's to prevent scammers and phishers from making Google-like homepages

Which is the purpose of trademark law -- to protect the customer by allowing them to distinguish with whom they're doing business.

Google's homepage has this big Google logo on it, which is (I presume) a registered trademark of Google. If you put a Google logo, or something that looks like it, on your page, the trademark cops will crush you. No design patent is necessary.

This is more like Apple's evil "look-and-feel" lawsuits from the early 90s.

Re:Evil.

[cbiltcliffe]

You need to ask yourself two question:

1. When has Google sued or threatened to sue anyone over patent violations?

2. When has Microsoft sued or threatened to sue anyone over patent violations?

I don't think Google has _ever_ even threatened to sue. They've been sued, on a number of occasions, but I can't find any references to them actually doing the suing.

Microsoft, on the other hand, has been shouting for years that Linux violates 238 of it's patents. Although they've toned it down recently. They've also sued TomTom just this year, over patent violations.

It's not just "Microsoft has a patent, so they're evil!......Google has a patent, so they're showing the stupidity of the patent system!"
You've got to take into account the history of the patent holder, what previous abuses they have subjected customers and competitors to, among other things.

There's a reason the punishment for a second offence is bigger than the first offence. Because courts take into account the history of the offender. You're not doing that.
You're complaining about foebois and fanbois, while you yourself are blinkered to the big picture.

Re:Evil.

[Anonymous Coward]

As a patent attorney, I can tell you it makes a big difference--the coverage of a design patent is very thin--it covers basically what and only what you see in solid lines in the image of the patent that was included in the article (the dotted lines are not part of the patent). This means this patent covers a big search box, with the links above and below, and notably a big box that says "search" right next to one that says "I'm feeling lucky". Design patents are pretty narrow anyway, but including the boxes and wording keeps this pretty tight.

All-in-all, this is probably just fine. It will keep anyone from creating dead knock-offs, but not much more.

Design patent != Normal Patent...

[nweaver]

Design patents are for very distinctive but not functional items.

EG, Apple has tons, TONS of design patents on the iMac, as they had on the NeXT cube and pizza boxes, as so on and so forth...

That google did NOT already have a design patent on their home page is strange and noteworthy, not that they just got one now.

Before everyone jumps on this

[BeardsmoreA]

It is of course perfectly possible that they have no intention of abusing this in any way, and merely wanted to make sure they didn't end up fighting any stupid law suits from some bright spark who had the idea of filing something similar and going after them with it.
Time will tell how 'evil' this is.

defensive patenting

[rackeer]

Let me defend google. One thing is wanting to reform the status quo, another having to live with it. They are pragmatic. It doesn't make sense to close your eyes to reality. Google has been fighting off patent trolls for a long time. They have to be careful.

Before you start foaming at the mouth...

[John Hasler]

...note that this a is a design patent . It is more like a trademark than a utility patent and covers only the "non-functional" elements of the design.

Has Google been losing its luster, lately?

[MoralHazard]

First, there's the outages. Google NEVER used to go down, it was part of their "mystique"--their engineering was SOOO amazing, and so well designed. The Cloud could NEVER go down!

Second, there's the Evil. I feel like I saw this one coming, years ago, having spent a good portion of my career in the advertising industry. It's a simple equation, right? Google is a publicly-traded company, and their core business is selling advertisements, which means their REAL business is selling your eyeballs+buying habits to anybody and everybody with cash. Eventually, there had to be some visible, significant conflicts between the basic reality and their high-concept, geek-chic PR fantasy.

Finally, and this is more personal, there's the lack of responsiveness from developers, and the perception of a "one-way street". Go look up the API for Google Tasks, and you'll see what I mean: Not only doesn't it exist, despite a lot of begging from interested users/developers, but Google keeps responding (when they do respond, which isn't often) that they have a corporate policy of not discussing pending release schedules. I understand that they have finite resources and have to make their own development roadmap, but their attitude seems to be "we're not going to acknowledge the gripes of our base". Which basically is the same attitude that any Big Software Company takes.

So, I'm not saying that Google is a crap company, or that I'm going to stop using Gmail, or that they're the new Evil Empire. But they're not really fundamentally different from every other Evil Corporation that we like to villify, here on Slashdot. There are no "good guys" and "bad guys"--there's just an open field of self-interested actors, each with a shitload more money, engineers, and lawyers than you.

Appear to not do Evil!

[Bill_the_Engineer]

Let me get this straight.

Google goes to a library and begins to scan every book they can get their hands on for the "Altruistic" reason of making the book available for a wider audience. This is without asking the author's permission, and to make things appear fair they make a scheme that authors have to follow to "opt-out". This is basically changing the enforcement of the current copyright law for Google's benefit.

While at the same time they are defending their right to copy the contents of a book without the author's permission in court, they patent their home page so other's can't copy it without Google's permission. Bizarre. Pot meet Kettle...

Re:Don't be evil?

[reebmmm]

Design patent law is an area of great frustration for people. Design patents are relatively easy to obtain because of what they cover: essentially the identical design or any colorable imitation. As recently stated by the Fed. Cir., the test for design patent infringement is stated: "infringement will not be found unless the accused article âoeembod[ies] the patented design or any colorable imitation thereof.â" Egyptian Goddess, Inc. v. Swisa, Inc. Therefore, to invalidate, the design must either embody the prior art or merely be a colorable imitation. This is a tricky analysis.

For companies like Apple and Google, design patents are helpful in preventing knock-offs. In this respect, the line is blurred between trademark and design patent law. However, they are not useful for much else since many of the elements of a design are functional (and a good lawyer can make that argument) and are not merely composed of distinctive elements.

And, all is not lost for similar "prior art" designs, though. The very same case made the point that "prior art" designs might also be used by a defendant to highlight the differences between the claimed and accused design. Thus, an accused defendant might escape infringement by pointing out those elements they share with the prior art design and thus those elements cannot be the grounds for infringement.

A final point, design patents are what a lot of people were duped into filing when going to Invention Help companies. Those companies simply filed a mostly worthless design patent instead of a utility patent. They have practically no commercial value except as a deterrent to would-be second-comers trying to copy verbatim the design. Therefore, those that were duped have virtually no protection against second comers that merely make changes the look & feel of an "invention." Plus, the inventors are then locked out of filing a utility application because they usually don't realize until much too late (more than a year after they start selling, for instance). That sucks.

Re:Evil. -- Make it prior-art not a patent!

[Webcommando]

...or they could have simply published and established prior art without the need for a patent.

If you have an idea and you want to make sure you can use it, but don't think it is patent worthy, you can publish it to cite later when someone else attempts to patent it.

When I was designing manufacturing systems, we would often do this. Since it was internal technology, it would be difficult to identify infringers using it in their factories. However, we didn't want some machine vendor or someone visiting claiming our designs are an infringement.

I'll admit I don't trust Google as far as I can throw one of their private jets. I'll also admit that I believe patents are important to protect real innovations.