Old Prior Art…Google this time

Written on January 19, 2005 by Stephen M. Nipper in Historical & Interesting
3 Comments - Leave a comment!

Via this site, reference to prior art to Google’s new patent on highlighting the search term in the results: 

The USPTO kicked off 2005 by awarding Google a new patent  for highlighting the search term in a retrieved document by changing at least one of a color, font, style, effect, and size. But more than a decade earlier, a 1994 IBM BookManager Library Reader User’s Guide described the concept of search emphasis, the use of color or intensity to make search matches stand out from the rest of the text in a softcopy document…

Related posts:

  1. Google — Wireless Froogle
  2. I Love Google! Google Patent Search goes live.

3 Responses to Old Prior Art…Google this time
  1. frequent reader
    January 21, 2005 | 12:09 pm

    This site is amazing at collating unknown or little known prior art, often of very high relevance.

    The patent office should check this blog themselves.

    Great job!!!

    ….Oh, maybe you can make an index to the prior art you post about to make things easier to find here.

  2. Law Student
    February 1, 2005 | 12:11 pm

    This wonderful blog seems to have provided prior art to nullify a pesky patent infringement suit brought by a puny and floundering company called “Neomedia” (of Fort Myers, FL) and Virgin Megastores:

    “* In January, Fort Myers, Fla.-based NeoMedia Technologies sued Virgin Entertainment and several smaller companies. NeoMedia says it owns a patent for connecting a product with a Web site. Virgin Megastores’ listening stations, which allow customers to scan a bar code on a CD and listen to it via the Internet, violate that patent, NeoMedia’s lawyers say. In 2003, NeoMedia lost $ 5 million.”

    (from USA TODAY, May 17, 2004, Monday, FINAL EDITION, MONEY, Pg. 3B)

    I looked at “Neomedia’s” web site, and it may well be that ALL of their core patents they rely on to attack competitors are invalid!

    Virgin Entertainment should pay Stephen Nipper for the tip!!!

  3. Happenstance
    February 25, 2005 | 2:20 pm

    You might want to check out the latest court docket. Seems to me that Neomedia Technologies is ahead of the game with a settlement conference that already took place a few days ago..to Neomedia’s advantage.

    “Settlement conference held on 2/23/2005. All matters relating to the referral of this case having been resolved, the referral is closed and the case is returned to the assigned judge.”

    http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=5551448

    Looks like Stephen Nipper ought to return the payment to Virgin. :P