| More patent nonsense from Amazon & Google »techdirt.com/articles/20071218/171711.shtml
"On Tuesday, Amazon.com was granted a patent for Personalized Selection and Display of User-Supplied Content to Enhance Browsing of Electronic Catalogs, which the three inventors note covers authoring and posting pieces of content, referred to as 'blurbs,' for viewing and rating by other users. The patent claims cover blurbs generated using a blurb authoring pipeline ('internal blurbs') as well as those obtained from external sources via RSS feeds ('external blurbs')." The details show that the patent is for personalizing these "blurbs," but it's difficult to see what's patentable here.
Google has patented "snippets"? Now wouldn't that make for an interesting patent infringement lawsuit? Google's patent appears to be about taking a document and coming up with an automated summary "snippet" that can be displayed with search results. Again, it seems like a stretch that this should be patentable, but the patent office clearly feels differently. So, let's see... if both blurbs and snippets are patented, what's next? Clips? Who wants to patent clips? Yahoo? Microsoft? eBay? Anyone?
What's next? Patents on sentences & paragraphs & links.
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 scrummie02BentleyPremium
join:2004-04-16
Arlington, VA
 ·Comcast
| fortunately, or unfortunately...depending on how you look at it, they pretty much have the market locked. There is little to compete with them. They either buy everything or innovate. I think this won't affect them in the long run.
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| reply to fAcEtIOUs
As they become big dogs, the news folks will dig up anything and make it look evil. Google however, is still the trendy savior of the universe so for the moment they are untouchable.
Also note how there's not that much bad "evil" press towards Microsoft lately? Perhaps people are finally realizing that any company can turn to the dark-side of business practices if they sugar coat it enough.
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