Google Awarded Broad Patent For Location-Based Advertising
Mashable has a report of a patent that just issued (6-1/2 years after filing) — apparently Google now has a lock on location-based advertising. It's not clear that the search company intends to assert the patent against any other companies (such as emerging rival Apple), but it's useful as leverage. Here is the patent.
Update: 03/02 14:34 GMT by S : Reader butlerm noted that the incorrect patent was linked. It now points to the correct URL.
After a little more checking: The correct patent is patent 7,668,832 granted Feb 23, 2010 as listed here
Note to web log authors: You can't use just any old URL. Some URLs have content that changes over time. The PTO web site may return a different patent every day if you don't actually query (and thus generate a URL based on) patent number.