Slashdot Log In
Google Patents the Design of Search Results Page
Posted by
kdawson
on Thu Dec 14, 2006 08:32 AM
from the look-and-feel dept.
from the look-and-feel dept.
prostoalex writes "ZDNet is reporting that USPTO issued a patent to Google, Inc. for 'ornamental design for a graphical user interface'. This is not, as ZDNet points out, a software patent (which is usually issued as a utility patent), but a design patent, which governs the look and feel of the product and prevents others from directly copying it." Ironic, given Google's recent slip-up of copying a Yahoo page. In news on the flipside, Google has launched a patent search service (in beta).
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Do no evil (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Do no evil (Score:5, Funny)
-Eric
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Has anyone thought that maybe, just maybe, that's a template provided by Microsoft? You know, since it's pitching the IE7 upgrade and all that.
RTFA (Score:5, Informative)
On the subject of them "copying" a Yahoo page:
Has anyone thought that maybe, just maybe, that's a template provided by Microsoft? You know, since it's pitching the IE7 upgrade and all that.
From the article [zawodny.com],
Quote "And I've checked with our PR group to make sure that this wasn't just a template that Microsoft gave to all partners. It's not." Unquote.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Please, Google's actions are NOT bad here! (Score:3, Funny)
*runs for the hills*
Re:Do no evil (Score:5, Interesting)
Since we're linking to Jeremy's blog post, I thought it might be worth while to also post Matt Cutts blog [mattcutts.com] regarding this 'drama'. Matt acknowledges Googles mistake (and by Google, we mean a person(s) working for Google who first, thought copying a Yahoo! page was a good idea and 2) got through management approval to let it go live.)
Matt also points out, probably more interesting, how Yahoo! is not entirely innocent [yahoo.com] when it comes to 'copying' what the competitor does. However, the comments on his page have an interesting discussion of which is truly worse? Copying UI/Layout/Design or Graphics/Layout/Design.
This is a tough call for me (as a web programmer/developer). I can kind of go both ways on this one. Patents and such are always a difficult concept to talk about. On one hand, they protect inventor and innovators, while on the other hand they're a forced 'legal' monopoly of "If they make it, you cannot make it too". As an inventor, I'd hate to create something, be original, and have it copied. As an average everyday person, I'd hate for one company to control a product and prevent natural competition.
In this sense, I cannot agree with myself on this situation. A photographer buys a Hamburger at a popular fast-food chain. Takes it home and opens it up and takes a photograph of it. A 2nd photographer see this photo (on the 1st photographers website) takes a hamburger from the same food-chain, and shoots a drastically similar photograph (the pickle is on the other side). A 3rd photographer cooked his own hamburger, and decided to take a photo of it, and has never seen photographer 1 or 2's photos, and his photo turns out to be almost the exact same image of the 1st photographer. Who's right? Who's wrong? Has a 'crime' (either moral, ethical, artistic, respectful, or legal) been committed?
Regarding the Google vs Yahoo!, it raises another question... online media. Graphics/Photos (JPG, GIFs, PNGS, etc) are protected, but what about UI? Layout? Coding practices? If it 'looks' the same on a monitor, is it not like being a Photo? After all, I can take a screen-capture and make it one easily. So, should it be equally worse to copy ones layout or design? Or even use similar or the same color palettes?
If I spend hours of time and money in R&D for the perfect usable interface, should my 'innovation' also be protected, the same as if I took the time to take a photo of something? After all, a layout/design is artistically placed in the same manner a photographer or painter choose the placement of objects in their shot and a designer chooses their color and brightness the same as a photographer or painter chooses theirs.
Cheers,
Fozzy
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
A photographer buys a Hamburger at a popular fast-food chain. Takes it home and opens it up and takes a photograph of it.
OK, that photographer has copyright in the image
A 2nd photographer see this photo (on the 1st photographers website) takes a hamburger from the same food-chain, and shoots a drastically similar photograph (the pickle is on the other side).
There has been actual copying and this is a breach of the first photographer's copyright.
A 3rd photographer cooked his own hamburger, and decid
Look and feel patents, like software patents... (Score:3, Insightful)
that's what's copyright is for!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Look and feel patents, like software patents... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Except if the patronage people/groups could make a profit off of distributing that work and sharing it with others, there would be a lot fewer groups. Effectively all music/tv/movie media would be the equivalent of what the independant and low-budget-for-donation-only groups do. I'm not saying those groups are all bad, but we'd still be missing a lot of quality stuff we have now.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Og: Hey, I just got this crazy idea of connecting two round stones to the ends of a horizontal pole. It'll make it easier to haul stuff around.
Me: Sounds great, but who will do your harvest duties while you build it? And how do you expect to get any money out of it, people will just copy you. I myself thought of this great tune, sang it to my wife and she loved it. But I'd never sing it public, they'd just learn it themselv
Re: (Score:2)
Simple: they don't!
What is it with everybody always assuming the world needs full-time professional artists?! The human race did just fine -- and in some places, is still doing fine -- with everyone having a "day job" and making folk art for fun!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Look and feel patents, like software patents... (Score:4, Insightful)
Design patents have existed forever. They are really no big deal. An item has to be almost exactly the same to infringe on them.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Look and feel patent? Prohibited long ago. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Look and feel patent? Prohibited long ago. (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I would say it should be classified as "sculpture" and be copyrighted instead, but since copyright lasts (effectively) forever and patents don't, I'm happier with the patent!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
padding the patent portfolio (Score:5, Insightful)
In theory a problem for all the "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em (*ahem* confuse 'em?)" school of search destinations, but.. Google will never enforce the patent, so its probably moot...
----
graphically speaking [kotay.com]
Re:padding the patent portfolio (Score:5, Insightful)
That is some scary thinking. Of course it would be silly for them not to enforce the patent now, they don't need to. What happens down the road though when google is not doing so well and stockholders and calling for blood? They will leverage any assets they have to turn a profit, they have little other choice. Then we will see just how damaging these "patent portfolios" can be.
We will never see IBM, Microsoft, Google, Apple, Amazon, or any other company with a huge patent portfolio go out of business under the current patent system. If all else fails, they will turn into the ultimate leech, a patent holding company bleeding off of everyone else. They stockholders will demand it, to not leverage an advantage they have when other people's money is at stake is criminal in the eyes of business.
Finkployd
Parent
Re:padding the patent portfolio (Score:5, Interesting)
You did not think that through all the way.
Google will sue over software patents the second that the income they could expect to get from those lawsuits exceeds the income they expect to gain from their software. Right now they feel that building their software portfolio is a much better revenue stream, but that does not mean that things cannot change.
That's why the only people you see initiating patent lawsuits are these little patent clearinghouses that buy up patents from small software companies, but don't own any IP. That way they can sue over patent violations, without having any IP that can be sued back for patent violations.
Right, but do the math. Creating software is significantly more expensive (and fraught with uncertainty regarding future income) than licensing a patent. If Office and Windows sales dropped so low that MS felt it could get more money by not selling any more software and instead using it's vast patent portfolio to export money from those who do produce software, doing so would be a no-brainer.
Finkployd
Parent
Fanboy defense (Score:2)
Google will never enforce the patent, so its probably moot...
That's the fanboy defense. Google will never enforce till they are doing well.
But the moment, Google starts making loses, starts getting screwed by some competitor,
I am sure the option of using the patent will look good.
Prior art and my previous patents (Score:5, Funny)
The entire content of the World Wide Web is in violation of my patent rights. E-mail me for the address to which you may send payments.
Assholes.
Re:Prior art and my previous patents (Score:4, Funny)
Oh yeah? Bring it on! [blankwebpage.com]
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Only on
Re: (Score:2)
Oooh, too bad for you -- I've already patented the business method of "trolling for patent royalties via email." So yeah, just forward all those payments to me and I we'll call it even, eh?
Fun Queries (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.google.com/patents?q=wtf&btnG=Search+P
http://www.google.com/patents?q=peanut+butter+jel
http://www.google.com/patents?q=drm&btnG=Search+P
Design? Google? (Score:5, Interesting)
really talking about it "organization". Afterall Google's result pages are
about as graphics-lite as a page can possibly be. Furthermore, they're affected
by client-side issues from screen-size to font settings. So the look of
the results page is in many ways a matter of client side rendering.
So I'm guessing we're talking about patenting the "organization" of data, and not
the specific visual identity of the search results themselves. So.... I'm not sure
I see the originality here. Google's advantage over previous-generation browsers
was ultimately speed and a kickass search & pagerank algorithm. But ultimately
the organization of the results doesn't seem entirely dissimilar from other
search engines.
And since this wasn't awarded a "utility" patent, we know we're not talking about
anything that has functional value -- just "visual originality". Take away
the Google logo and IMHO there's a whole lot of "visual originality" to the
results.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
design to having two potential meanings aesthetics and
form ("organization"). Then I expressed my *opinion* that
in terms of "form" I do not believe that Google has
significantly differentiated themselves from their
competitors.
Kapisch?
You can't copyright.. (Score:2)
Finding Out What Patents Are (Score:2)
But Carbon Copy (of Lotus) was OK? (Score:5, Insightful)
Years ago, there were Lotus 1-2-3 clones, which copied not only the general visual appearance but the actual menu layout, sequences, names, and functionality.
One of the more famous was literally named "Carbon Copy." That was the product name. Really.
Lotus took the company to court and lost. IIRC The court ruled that it was OK to copy the look, feel, and details of the Lotus product's menus, because there was no other way to produce a competitive product.
How the heck can a perfect functional duplicate of a complete menu tree be OK, but a vague organization of elements on a web screen be copyrightable?
This is not a case of Google being evil (although they are), this is a case of a sea change in what the United States is willing to grant IP protection to.
But at least it was the Google News screen. I was afraid maybe they'd gotten a patent on the spare, lean, mean Google Search screen and that it would now be compulsory for everyone else to have a cluttered web page.
Must hit Preview... must hit Preview... (Score:2)
Re:But Carbon Copy (of Lotus) was OK? (Score:4, Interesting)
I've never heard of Carbon Copy. The only lawsuit I know of over a product with the degree of copying of 1-2-3 that you refer to is Lotus v. Paperback Software over VP-Planner, which Lotus won, on copyright grounds.
The court in Lotus v. Paperback actually ruled the exact opposite, on the basis of the fact that there were successful competing products that didn't do that.
Patents are not copyrights and are governed by different law. The reason people seek these kinds of patents now is that efforts to use copyright to protect general look and feel and short of fairly exact copying (such as that at issue in Lotus v. Paperback) failed in the 1980s and 1990s, (e.g., in Apple vs. HP and Microsoft, and in Lotus v. Borland), which have led companies to seek different means of protecting this aspect of their product from copycats; I don't think is a case of a change in what the US is willing to grant IP protection for so much as a change in what companies are seeking a particular kind of IP protection for, as a direct result of the failure of a different kind of IP protection to protect it.
Parent
Patent Search is much more interesting (Score:4, Interesting)
The usual favorites:
http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT6368227&id
http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT5443036&id
No way (Score:2)
Proof! [google.com]
Yet another Google beta (Score:4, Funny)
MS patents an artwork for a desktop wallpaper (Score:2)
http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPATD506475&id
Another proof that big corporations use their cash to patent everything they can.
A whole day of fun (Score:2, Funny)
Design patent definition (Score:3, Informative)
And for those of you too lazy to even click: "In the United States, a design patent is a patent granted on the ornamental design of a functional item. Design patents are a type of industrial design right. Ornamental designs of jewelry, furniture, beverage containers (see Fig. 1) and computer icons are examples of what can be protected with design patents."
Seems to cover product/news/travel results (Score:2)
I'm not 100% sure, since I can't seem to get to a technical description, just the pictures. But this isn't a patent on the design of general search results pages.
Deja Vu all over again (Score:2)
Unfortunately the courts have no clear opinion on this. Lotus vs Borland made it all the way to the Supreme Court but was split 4-4 with one justice recusing himself.