Google Gmail beaten to the punch?

May 20, 2004 on 10:47 am | In Current Affairs |

Internetnews.com reporting that Google has a pending patent application (filed June 2, 2003) for serving up ads with email service (i.e., their new Gmail email service), BUT Salt Lake City, Utah based Sponster beat them to the punch (filed April 5, 2002), winning the race to the Patent Office for the concept.

A copy of the Sponster patent [pdf*].

Presuming Google’s earliest effective filing date is June 6, 2003 and presuming that the application was/will not be published early, the Google Gmail application(s) will not be published (and publically available like the Sponster application) until December 6, 2004.

[*note: pdf via www.pat2pdf.com…download copies of US patents for free]

UPDATE: What is even more interesting is to compare Fig. 1b of the Sponster application:

To the sample targeted ads Ernie has a link to in his post: “Google Mail - it’s easy and useful and the ads are unobtrusive“

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