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Is Google AutoLink Patent-Pending By Microsoft?
Posted by
timothy
on Sun Feb 20, 2005 03:05 PM
from the what-would-ben-franklin-do dept.
from the what-would-ben-franklin-do dept.
theodp writes "While Google pooh-poohed any comparison of its controversial AutoLink feature to Microsoft's SmartTag technology, Google's generation of dynamic links to maps and use of ISBN numbers to trigger links to booksellers cover the same territory as Microsoft's 2000 patent application for Providing electronic commerce actions based on semantically labeled strings, whose sole inventor - Jeff Reynar - was the lead SmartTag Program Manager while at MS and is reportedly now a Google Product Manager who's being credited as AutoLink's creator. Reynar's patent applications that have been assigned to Microsoft, including one for Smart Links and Tags, describe a world of 'recognizer' plug-ins that automatically look at every document a user creates, receives or views, transmitting messages to 'action' plug-ins - and even to the plug-ins' authors - that can be used to decide what info you'll be presented with, what options you'll be given, what price you'll pay for goods, and even who you'll be permitted to buy from."
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Your Rights Online? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Your Rights Online? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, this is about everyone's rights except Microsoft- which includes me, you, and Google. Just because you may not want to implement a goofy smart-tag-like technology doesn't mean you haven't lost the right to do it.
Parent
Re:Your Rights Online? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Your Rights Online? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the point more is, neither one should be entitled to patent such an idea, but both should be entitled, if they wish, to implement it. As should you or I be entitled to implement it, or a similar technology, in programs we write.
Parent
Re:Your Rights Online? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry to get so offtopic, but I wouldn't call it groupthink. Groupthink implies thinking as a group. I'd call this more of herd instinct, because few people are thinking. Anyway, yes, as soon as someone gets a post to 3 it usually goes clear up to 5 because people with modpoints are too afraid to think for themselves and do original moderation but need to use points.
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Re:Your Rights Online? (Score:5, Insightful)
This particular case has some relevance to anyone who develops a particular technology, becomes an expert in it, and acquires a patent for his company. If you change jobs, you might not be able to take your expertise with you.
Parent
Re:Your Rights Online? (Score:5, Insightful)
Patents are (at least arguably) a necessary mechanism, but the way patents are being used in the United States is a problem. Especially when patents are being issued that are clearly barred by prior art and then used to extort money from small businesses that cannot afford to fight those patents. See the EFF [eff.org] for more info.
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Re:Your Rights Online? (Score:4, Funny)
[X] Clueless n00b
[X] Lamer
[_] Flamer
[_] Pervert
[_] Sexist
[X] Spammer
[_] Racist
[X] Dumbass
[X] Waste of Life
[X] Other: Pathetic Moron
You are being flamed because:
[X] You obviously don't know anything about the topic at hand.
[X] You started a pointless thread.
[_] You bumped a pointless thread.
[X] Your post contained nothing but crap.
[_] You can't spell more than 3 words right.
[X] Your awful markup made the post unreadable.
[_] You made a useless assumption.
[_] You posted IN ALL CAPS FOR NO APPARENT REASON.
[_] You tYpEd SoMeThInG lAmE lIkE tHiS.
[_] You don't know how to use the search feature
[X] You say you're "1337".
[_] You posted a topic that's been posted 50 times already.
As punishment, you must:
[X] Refrain from posting until you have a vague idea of what you're doing.
[X] Stab yourself in the eye with a pen.
[_] Give up your internet account.
[X] Eat paint chips for the next 6 months.
[X] Make goat.cx your home page.
[_] Jump into a bathtub with a toaster.
[X] Fuck yourself in the ass with a cactus
[X] Attach a car battery to your scrotum
Parent
Re:Your Rights Online? (Score:5, Informative)
Software patents gravely affect the rights of every developer out there, where have YOU been living?
Parent
I am Jack's total lack of surprise (Score:4, Insightful)
In two words... (Score:5, Insightful)
Eventually, as in every other case like this, there will be a lawsuit.
One side will win, the other won't. In either case, the loser will just change some small piece of the technology, and it will no longer infringe, if it even did in the first place.
The lawyers will get rich.
None of us will be affected in the slightest.
Cynical? Maybe. But before moderating, ask yourself if I'll end up being right.
I can't quite put my finger on it... (Score:4, Funny)
Wierd.
Time for Google to come out against EU Patents (Score:5, Insightful)
Afterall their patents on search technology are worthless, anyone could use Pagerank and Google could not show they had used it -> failed attempt to protect invention.
Their newer search technology (they changed the algo last year), hasn't been disclosed in patent form and so the SEOs & competitors don't know how it works and MS couldn't copy it -> successful defence of invention.
They don't hold enough patents to join the "big company patent exchange club".
ISBN prior art (Score:5, Interesting)
Sounds dodgy. (Score:5, Interesting)
Nick
Sounds anti-trust to me -- (Score:5, Insightful)
Interesting that anti-spyware has shown fresh installs of MS windows OS has spyware that tracks online use
Where are our privacy laws and fair competition laws?
Or do we really know who has bought them away from us?
The only way for this to be faired up is to allow any and everyone who wants to use such a thing, to be able to. Just like the solution to the "trillion dollar bet">/a> was faired up, via exposure and wide scope use. [pbs.org]
Or in other words: nobody gets an unfair (anti-competition) advantage in marketing via patenting some automated privacy invading information collecting marketing process.
Most software is NOT patentable as shown by abstraction physics" [ffii.org], and that certainly includes this.
google has evolved (Score:5, Insightful)
When I search for, for instance, HP Laserjet schematics, I get 40 pages of assholes peddling toner cartridges and refill kits.
That's NOT what I asked for, I want to find schematics that I can view. I don't want to buy a frigging CDROM with schematics on ebay, or laddersearch or toner carts or any of the other nonsense that google throws at me.
God I despise google. It has become the most useless of all search engines but the most profitable of all investments for online peddlers..
http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html. We (Score:5, Interesting)
Whenever I get a google search result that is full of spam, I usually try several other search engines, but the other engines results are normally worse than what Google gives me.
If you know a search engine that is less susceptible to spam than Google, please share!
Doug Moen.
Parent
does this cover www.domain.com autolinking (Score:4, Interesting)
Derivative Work (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, you could argue that the user is creating the derivative work and just using google as the means to do this, but I think modifying content to this extent falls outside fair use.
Ironic then that they are (allegedly) infringing on Microsoft's patent (a form of intellectual property) while they infringe on other people's copyrights (another form of IP).
Apple did it first anyway. (Score:5, Informative)
The only thing this patented Microsoft system seems to add is the idea of the link being calculated on a remote server rather than locally; this is a truly trivial step from what Apple's system explicitly did, and one that may not even exactly describe the google toolbar system.
The US is becoming irrelevant... (Score:5, Interesting)
We no longer are the premier manufacturer, and soon we won't be the largest customer/consumer base either. Within this decade this is happening, all the think tank analysts have said more or less the same thing, because the raw data is just raw data and it's just not that hard to see it.
Software can be written anywhere, it is no longer the arcane and exclusive province of a few thousand people in high level corporate or governmental/academic circles. It's a cheap commoditised "product" that x-millions create daily and x-tens of millions will be doing shortly within a few years. And most of the rest of the world is going to a FOSS model a lot quicker than we are, because of the benefits they see in it. That's not my call, just what you can see happening and read about.
Manufacturing of tangibles goes to those who care to do it, see Asia,the west made a decision via their "leaders" to minimise that because it was "too hard" or something, so there ya go. And despite people thinking software is all that important, tangibles still rule economically and in geopolitical importance, people eat real food, not virtual food, they drive real cars, not video game cars,they live in real homes not some ridiculous sim city environment. And etc, etc, etc.
Software is important,no one will deny that, but it's still the tool, not the product. Software more exists (outside of "entertainments") to facilitate production of Tangible Stuff mostly, of and by itself it's not as important except for that task, and the freer the better the faster the gooder it is,and patenting really balls up that process, s-o-o-o-o, software is coming from the FOSS world now, and it will only get better. and the two just don't mix, patents and FOSS. It's a bad idea really to even try.
Raw materials and energy come from where they come from, the US uses a lot more than we produce, so we fail it there as well economically. Just this year we even switched to a net ag products importer from exporter, the last thing we were the world leader in.
In short, all we have are weapons and hollywood and music as exports of note,all the other traditional exports are in decline,they are not going to recover, and patents on dubious software advances are a phony way to say we are still producing ultra valuable commodities, and are a last ditch paper work shuffling effort to make that fantasy come true, but the rest of the world ain't buying that. It's like calling all the stock market numbers the same as real money, it just ain't so. Patented "IP" is beyond a "tech bubble" phenomenon, it actually serves as a form of economic strangulatory suicide, except for a few people for a relatively short period of time. It's a smokescreen to feed to the US public to keep them faked out we still produce much.
Really, the only thing keeping the US afloat and uberimportant economically right this second is we have a force projection expansionist based military, a doofus at the top who is more than willing to use it, for all practical purposes a mercenary military dedicated to a small handful of transnationals and their controllers (I am sorry for that but it's true and I wish it weren't so...sorry), and the amount of our global debt we have accumulated. And we are in no position to actually pay this debt with anything real or intrinsically valuable, so they came up with this whopper fantasy game of "patenting" IP so that we could demand real stuff-money,goods and services for it, from "everyone else", that guy, and coincidently help to assuage the day of reckoning with this debt and no-tangible-work fiasco they got us into.
And it won't work, because the rest of the planet just ain't that dumb no mo' no mo'
Prior Art (Score:4, Informative)
I can't for the life of me remember the name for it, but back in the days of MacOS 9, Apple had some software that would parse any text on the screen and present you with a contextual menu that would be full of links to various things you could do with it.
It would be able to recognize a physical address and present you with a map. It could recognize email and web addresses in any application. It would add dates to your calendar and any number of other definable things.
Thats the name...
Apple Data Detectors.
http://www.miramontes.com/writing/add-cacm/add-ca
Would this not be exactly what the SmartTags patent is all about?
Doesn't matter. (Score:5, Insightful)
In Microsoft vs. the DoJ Microsoft won (even though it doesn't say that in the court documents)
In Microsoft vs. Google who will win?
Parent
Re:Tracking in such an evil sense (Score:5, Insightful)
I know it sounds paranoid, but considering Google's insane amount of traffic, and the fact the majority of their traffic comes from outside the US, coupled with their employee ties with the government and their past privacy issues, I've tended to stop using Google so much. Also, their search results have really begun to suck since 2003. Using Google to find anything is a frustrating experience.
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