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Comments: 390 +- Your Rights Online: Google Patents Its Home Page on Thursday September 03, @07:50AM
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timothy
on Thursday September 03, @07:50AM
from the to-advance-useful-arts-and-sciences dept.
from the to-advance-useful-arts-and-sciences dept.
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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?"
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Evil. (Score:5, Insightful)
That is all.
Re:Evil. (Score:4, Funny)
Or... it's a cunning ploy to show how idiotic Patents are in this day-and-age.
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Re:Evil. (Score:4, Insightful)
Or... it's a cunning ploy to show how idiotic Patents are in this day-and-age.
I hope so, but I doubt it. It's less-obviously idiotic than a lot of other software patents out there. If Google wanted to make that point, I think that would/could have been more effective.
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Re:Evil. (Score:5, Informative)
RTFS. It's a design patent, not a software (utility) patent.
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Re:Evil. (Score:5, Interesting)
RTFS. It's a design patent, not a software (utility) patent.
I'm not sure that distinction matters in this case. Designers are directly limited, but they'd use software to implement the idea. Software developers who make web pages are limited, despite this being a design patent.
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Re:Evil. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Re:Evil. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Evil. -- Make it prior-art not a patent! (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Re:Evil. -- Make it prior-art not a patent! (Score:5, Informative)
In case you hadn't noticed they did publish it. They even went to the lengths of making it the main feature of their website just to make it obvious that they really were publishing it.
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Re:Evil. -- Make it prior-art not a patent! (Score:4, Funny)
Google doesn't have to spend money to defend a patent suit in East Texas. It would be cheaper for them to buy East Texas.
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Re:Evil. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Re:Evil. (Score:5, Informative)
Wrong.
Microsoft sued first. TomTom's suit was the response.
http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE52J1IE20090320 [reuters.com]
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Evil. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I'm going to apply for a 'facial configuration' patent: A nose with two eyes above and to either side, with a mouth beneath. Then I'll SUE YOU ALL!
Re:Evil. (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, if they bust out an army of Google patent lawyers and start suing everything that has an input box and a submit button... then I'd have to agree. But for now, it could just be a brilliant plan to showcase how NOT evil Google is, and how RETARDED the patent process can be.
And besides... what if some malevolent entity decided to patent this before Google did? Then we'd all be in for a heap of trouble, because this other entity would be doing it just to troll patent infringement lawsuits all over the place. At least now Google could potentially prevent that kind of behavior... But again, goes to show how dumb the patent process really is.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What about chilling effects? You're telling me that you're happily invest your life savings into a business venture that includes something covered by a patent, merely on the hope that they won't care?
And what about when you're trying to find an investor or a loan, and the person points out the patent problem - are you going to be arguing "Oh that doesn't matter, Google are really really nice, they'd never do anything like taking someone to court. Oh go on, lend me the money, please?"
And besides... what if
Re:Evil. (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember reading somewhere that there are processes in place for a patent submitter to deprecate a patent and forcefully render its content public domain. Am I remembering incorrectly? If not, then that would surely be a sign of goodwill as it would render the given content unpatentable.
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Re:Evil. (Score:4, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain#Patent [wikipedia.org]
Should have included this in the post.
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Re:Evil. (Score:5, Insightful)
That is all.
Or it's to prevent scammers and phishers from making Google-like homepages. Think for a minute how awesome that would be if you got a rube to show up at your www.google.eldavo.com and it looked just like the Google homepage. They do a search for Bank of America and it takes them to www.bankofamerica.eldavo.com which looks just like bank of america. You could potentially do a lot of damage if you had the patience to go around scraping major sites and just making static HTML pages that sent username and password back to a database. And if you could get like three or four sites to correlate your identity theft ...
With domain name poisoning or the actions of some viruses on the hosts file in Windows, is it so hard to imagine an entrepreneurial scammer getting naive people to download and install a virus that simple takes them to www.google.eldavo.com instead of google's real homepage? Perhaps with this design patent (as everyone and their dog has pointed out already), their intent is to make prosecuting these scammers a possibility for them instead of having to wait for the feds to come up with some identity theft charges. After all, were I stealing your info, I'd just be selling it. Not directly doing the identity theft, mind you.
You can spin this both ways. Is it possible for Google to start attacking everyone with simple centered search boxes and links across the top? Maybe. I doubt they'd get far but if you can point me to a case of that, I'll conceded vileness.
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Re:Evil. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Goatse patents mooning (Score:5, Funny)
In retaliation, goatse [goatse.fr] has now patented mooning, and also all images of anuses.
That's not evil, that's a public service.
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Re:Evil. (Score:5, Informative)
It is a design patent, not an invention patent. Adidas has a patent on the three stripes design on their clothes. There is nothing technical or inventive about it, it is just how people recognise their product.
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Re:Evil. (Score:5, Informative)
They have a trademark as well, but if Nike were to take the design of one of the items of clothing, and replace the Adidas logo with their own, that wouldn't infringe the trademark, but it would infringe the design patent.
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Don't be evil? (Score:4, Informative)
I think Google needs a new motto.
Apparently she can't refrain from making Google be evil.
The only two good things I can think of regarding this are
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
What a load of bullsh*t! The patent office is completely incompetent. There is prior art. AltaVista for one http://web.archive.org/web/19961022174810/http://www.altavista.com/ [archive.org]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a design patent, so it is patenting what it looks like, not the functional effect of the page. The two pages look completely different, so an Altavista-like page would not infringe the patent.
Re:Don't be evil? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Design patent != Normal Patent... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Design patent != Normal Patent... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Design patent != Normal Patent... (Score:5, Insightful)
don't bother. /.ers see 'patent' and flip out. never mind that a design patent is non-functional, it doesn't matter. it's the "P" word.
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Re:Design patent != Normal Patent... (Score:4, Insightful)
Thank you, we know what a design patent is. How does that make it different such that the objections people have put forward here are not valid?
E.g., does that mean other people are free to design a similar interface? Of course not. In which case, they share the same property of other kinds of patents that people disagree with.
Put it another way - why does putting the word "design" in front make it okay? ("Don't bother, hamburger lady sees the 'd' word, and flips out, there's obviously no valid argument here." - see how invalid that argument is?)
And they are not "non-functional", rather, they cover non-functional designs. The patent itself certainly functions.
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Re:Design patent != Normal Patent... (Score:5, Informative)
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Before everyone jumps on this (Score:5, Insightful)
Time will tell how 'evil' this is.
defensive patenting (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Oh Joy (Score:3, Insightful)
Similarities (Score:3, Funny)
Before you start foaming at the mouth... (Score:5, Informative)
Don't hate the player, hate the game. (Score:4, Interesting)
Publicly lobbying for reform on patents they themselves own, doesn't this seem like a more defensive move than a necessarily malicious one?
I'm sure every doctor protesting tort reform has liability insurance regardless. Why shouldn't Google get some insurance of their own? It's a cut-throat world out there, after all. If you don't tread carefully, you'll get shut down.
Google Reality Check (Score:3, Informative)
Google is a publicly traded company and it's only obligation is to make a profit for shareholders
That means doing things like filing for ridiculous patents (because everyone else does it) and co-operating with bending to the will of Chinese authorities (because if we don't some other search company will and make all the money)
"Do no evil" is more of a guideline than a rule with Google. Maybe they should file a copyright for "We do less evil than everyone else"
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No.
There are numerous public companies that won't make a profit this year. In fact there are numerous public companies that have never made a profit.
The obligations of a public company are to file various securities reports. The rest is the same for public and private companies.
Has Google been losing its luster, lately? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Has Google been losing its luster, lately? (Score:4, Insightful)
Or maybe something in between. Why do you need to polarize like this?
You still get good companies, and you still get bad ones, and everything in between. And I don't just mean in terms of efficiency or how much profit they make. I for one believe that the people in charge at Google have more 'moral' business ethics than most.
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Re:Has Google been losing its luster, lately? (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, what I did there was the opposite of "polarize", because I smooshed everything into one big group, in the middle. I don't know what the right word would be, though.
What I also did, more importantly, was take the piss out of Google, and apparently offend one of their fans (you).
I'm curious what basis you have to believe that "the people in charge at Google have more 'moral' business ethics than most'. Did you take a sample of businesses and rate the ethical practices of each? Or have you worked there, and seen how Google Sausage is made, and compared it to other companies for which you've worked?
I'm going to wear my colors, here, and guess that you're responding to the hard work that Google's brilliant PR department has but into their carefully polished corporate image.
But let's make this fun, I'll going to and make this simple challenge:
What evidence can you provide to support your claim that Google is ethically superior to most other businesses?
and if you're game, you show me what you've got. (Feel free to define those terms however you want, it's your assertion, anyway.)
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Appear to not do Evil! (Score:5, Insightful)
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...
So much for "Do no evil" (Score:4, Insightful)
Google might have a relaxed and hip work environment, but some people in their legal and/or IP departments must be (IMO) taking some really bad trips. This is downright stupidity that does nothing to help promote meaningful patent reform unless Google uses this patent as an example of the type of schlock that is getting approved, and makes it the 'poster boy' for patent reform.
Re:Please read the patent (Score:5, Insightful)
There must be some functionality that is patented, so I doubt the patent is just "a search box with a couple buttons".
It's a design patent, not a patent. That is, a patent on visual arrangement of elements.
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Re:Well... (Score:4, Informative)
I'm all for invalidating software patents, but this one seems logical to me. The Google home page is iconic
That makes it a trademark, not a patent. The difference is important. It's the difference between telling Disney they can keep their mouse silhouette as a symbol of the company and telling them they can sue anyone who creates animated animals.
Seriously, I don't know if I blame Google because someone else would probably patent the "HTML form with one text field" and sue them if they didn't. I'm hoping to patent getting frustrated with politics and politicians. Once that comes through I should be able to quit my day job.
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