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Google Patents Caching MLK Day Search Results
theodp writes "Google remembers Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. not only with its Doodles, but also with its patents. 'Right around the Martin Luther King Holiday,' explained Google in its application for a recently-granted patent on Discovery of Short-Term and Emerging Trends in Computer Network Traffic, 'there may be many searches about "Martin Luther King"...Thus, it would be useful to have better methods of detecting short term trends for the purposes of caching search results to making them more readily available to users.' You may call the invention of detecting and caching 'MLK Day Sale' search results patently obvious, but the USPTO calls it U.S. Patent No. 8,082,342. Hey, at least it's arguably better than the patents issued to Microsoft and Google for avoiding walking or driving down Martin Luther King Boulevard!"
Please reread that last sentence and decide to delete it. It's racist and it's debatably slander towards Microsoft implying that they a) assume that all MLK Blvds are dangerous or in bad areas of town and b) their patent actually goes so far as to always exclude MLK Blvds from walking paths. You're not defending your point by linking to that St. Petersburg Times article, either.
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
"Something like this" is not covered by the patent. One particular implementation of a trend-prediction system is covered, down to the exact formula used to determine the need for a cache of a particular term's results. Something else, like using a moving average, would not be covered, and may work well enough to do the job.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Is there any kind of comment-system regarding these patents online? Like, my (published) thesis-work from1997 exactly covers the stuff mentioned above, with restriction that there are exactly 2 priority-levels..
Then submit it to the patent office as prior art, patent it yourself and start claiming royalties.
These granted software patents are ridiculous. Patenting detection of trending topics and search queries? Jeez.
You complain that too many software patents are obvious... so your solution is no patents at all for the entire industry, regardless of whether they're inventive? That seems overbroad. There are a few obvious patents in the automotive industry, too - should all automotive patents be abolished? How about pharmaceuticals? Some of the diagnostic methods are pretty obvious, too... Should we abolish all patents on new medicines?
There's simply no connection to the alleged problem in your solution. If there's a problem with obviousness, the solution is better examination, not "let's exempt an entire industry".
No. The non-obvious part is the formula. If you don't use that formula (or trivial alterations of it), you aren't affected by the patent. The general concept of "cache based on predictions" is not patented (at least, not by this one).
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
I remember a similar argument said about microsoft because for a long time it did not use its patents in an offensive way... including to stiffle competition... what is to stop google from changing their mind next year? or simply to sell their patents to a more litigative (If you think this can not happen, just look at the recent sale of novell patents)
Never antropomorphize computers, they do not like that
We're not building a big army because we want to invade anyone, we're building a big army so that we can defend ourselves against those other bad people. We can tell that they're planing on invading us, because they've been building big armies...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
What I'd really like to know, TechGuys (aka a few other aliases), is why, in your first-post-same-timestamp-as-article-100+word diatribe, did you fail to mention Microsoft, even once? Why did you not lump MS in with Google (always first) and Apple in this statement:
Jeez. Companies like Google and Apple are collectively abusing the system and patenting every single thing they can think of, most of which are outright obvious
Was this simply an oversight, Insightbites? An error of omission, DCTech?
Pray tell.