Google Patents Its Homepage
Google just received a design patent for Google Search's homepage. It took the US Patent Office over five years to approve this patent (D599,372) for the design of a "graphical user interface for a display screen of a communications terminal," but Google's request was finally approved yesterday. The company already owned a patent for its search results pages. In addition, Google also received a patent for a server-based spellchecker yesterday, as well as another one for "collaborative web page authoring."
We don't assume that Google will soon start a patent fight with Yahoo over this, but Yahoo Search's current homepage obviously looks quite similar to Google's, though without the two prominent button's underneath the search box. We are obviously not lawyers, but as far as we know, design patents are basically just a form of making sure the design of a functional item is protected and not so much an acknowledgment that this is a completely new invention. Design patents have to be for a new designs though, and we just have to wonder if somebody else didn't offer a similarly minimalist search interface before Google.
Tip of the hat to Ryan Tate at Gawker for first noticing this patent.
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That is completely insane!!! How does a patent office get fooled into approving something like this.
You wrote, "we just have to wonder if somebody else didn't offer a similarly minimalist search interface before Google."
Um... yeah... like maybe AltaVista, back in the DIGITAL Equipment days?
The patent office needs to shutter its doors to such proposals. It was designed to be for inventions, not the expression of creative concepts. That's the job of Copyright.
I am not a patent lawyer either (I focus on patent search and information issues), but I just wanted to add that it might be helpful to check out some posts from 2008 on the noted law blog Patently-O about the Egyptian Goddess case, which relates to the power of design patents and what constitutes their infringement.
http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2008/02/egyptian-goddes.html
http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2008/09/en-banc-federal.html
That's one way to keep startups at bay: send them a threatening legal letter that they can't afford to respond to.
"collaborative web page authoring."
Good bye Wikipedia?
its stupid things like this that makes me want to move to countries that don't enforce patents and start my business there!
It s Google, that s all
Url's in blue and once visited in purple: oh no! We can't do that cause we'll get sewed by google!
Hmmm. IMO AltaVista should have been considered prior art and this patent should have been rejected.
Don Crowther's brain will be patented next.
I'm just wondering how they're going to enforce this. What counts as enough of a deviation from this design? And, also...what the hell.
The more labels the better. Google pretty much owns the world wide web.
A little scary...maybe
I won't be able to let my grandmother read this, she is terrified of computers, and even more scared of the word Google, almost like if she walks by one it will grab her and pull her into a galazy lol, and that Google is evil.
Okay Granny is quit old, and very sweet but I can't help to get a chuckle out of it...but hey who knows after reading this maybe granny is onto something
Meg
Google pretty much owns the world wide web
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.
Google has obtained design patents on a few more of its websites, e.g. its patent search engine (http://www.designpatents.us/v/20090428/D0591304.png/), Google Maps (http://www.designpatents.us/v/20090630/D0595304.png/), and a fairly broad one on banners (http://www.designpatents.us/v/20090512/D0592219.png/).
I like it. Very much. And I can see how it has grown organically from where you where yesterday (and from before that too) which is cool.