US Dir. of Citizen Participation Patents the News 66
theodp writes "Ex-Googler and now White House Director of Citizen Participation Katie Stanton is charged with promoting open public dialogues. Last Thursday, Stanton and Google snagged a patent on displaying financial news. Google explains that Stanton's invention — Interactive Financial Charting and Related News Correlation — will 'facilitate and encourage the user's use and understanding of financial information,' which does jibe nicely with Stanton's appointment to Obama's New Media Team. Too bad it'll be encumbered by a Google patent until 2027."
Re:Prior Art? (Score:3, Interesting)
Google isn't the only site that displays news on stock charts this way, and I don't think they were the first.
The examples you give don't implement the claimed invention. Look at the way Google Finance renders a stock chart [google.com]. There is a large detail chart and a smaller chart below it. The smaller chart has an adjustable, slidable 'window' which the detail chart shows in, well, more detail. The broadest claim basically refers to this two chart sliding window approach. There are narrower dependent claims that include the news flags feature, but they necessarily require the two chart sliding window feature as well.
Google is not a patent troll (Score:3, Interesting)
Have you ever seen Google sue offensively? Cuz I haven't. It seems Google uses their patents for defensive cases (i.e. so someone else can't sue them), not as a patent troll. At least, that's been the rule so far.
Re:Prior Art? (Score:2, Interesting)
This line is from a header file for a charting object we wrote in a windows desktop app written in MFC // Inception - 2.13.96
It does exactly what is described in the patent, chart with shields on it that you could click to link to corporate events and news stories, a smaller version of the chart with sliders to allow you to set the date range, and so on. Of course, the product is no longer sold, so that properly means you can reinvent the wheel where software is concerned
Stupid patents