This is a "Design Patent", not a utility patent.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_patents |
That means that what's being patented is the appearance of the page, not its functional characteristics. Now, the big question is whether its appearance is truly original, and significantly different from that of search engine result pages that existed before Google. |
Betcha it's because of Live's obvious simularity. |
anybody got a patent on browser upgrade advertisement layouts? |
Wow, this is a scary thought! .... i would never have thought this kinda of patenting would occur (especially from Google – but they have their reasons), but i'm sure there are plenty more i've never heard about. I'm just scared of the big corps or people who'd want to harm & sue for money because of patent infringement on user interfaces.
This is gonna drive many sites to change their Google-look-alike pages creating GUI wars against one another for stupid patenting like this. |
Interesting as to how this will pan out internationally. I'm not sure that a US 'Design Patent' has any counterparts in other parts of the world.
If Google was behaving as a truly international organisation – I doubt that this would be making news. |
Hahaha!! I love how they used the word "bush" as the search example. CLassic! :) |
I was thinking to myself the other day that live.com looks so similar to Google. Maybe they are going to bring a lwasuit to MSFT! |
Get used to it, its corporate warfare – patent club portfolio. =)
Shame we dont have direct democracy, so we are subhect to be fooled anyway. |
Maybe you guys didn't notice, but Google Inc. filed for this patent on March 26 2004. They were way ahead of the curve for putting patents on software design. |
I was just adding this comment... And the screenshot lists the Copyright information of 2004 too. |