IT Professionals

Could Yahoo! Patents Spell Trouble For Google Instant?

Posted by on Sep 21, 2010 | 2 Comments

There should be an image here!Just when it was safe to assume that Yahoo! was on its last legs, this article surfaces and demonstrates that Yahoo! potentially still has some teeth left. Seems that Google could be looking at a patent headache or two due to the fact that this kind of instant search results concept… was provided by Yahoo! about five years ago. Bundle this with the fact that Yahoo! does indeed have patents surrounding this functionality and one can only assume that Google is going to have to cough up some green here fairly soon.

Perhaps instead, though, Yahoo! and Google will be able to work something out. After all, Google could easily cough up any funds requested if it means avoiding a messy legal batter over IP rights. But despite all of this, Google is going to have to deal with Yahoo! on its own terms, at some basic level. As to how this turns out is anyone’s ballgame at this stage.

One thing is clear. Yahoo! wants this alleged patent infringement on the books and in the public light. It’s been making sure that anyone who will listen is aware of it. But what remains a mystery is what will happen from here. Does Yahoo! intend to go after Google over this? Maybe Yahoo! is bitter as when it offered instant results, no one seemed to care? I guess only time will tell at this point.

[awsbullet:fight google]

  • Jay Stephens

    Bing has offer instant results from the beginning, and now it is pointed out that Yahoo did this 5 years ago, so WHY is this such a big deal now that Google is coming to the party a day late and a dollar short?

  • http://searchasyoutype.wordpress.com/about Pal Sahota

    My name is Pal Sahota and the company name is Pal Systems Ltd. This is the same technology I invented it in 1989 and I called it search-as-you-type. Google are calling it under a few names including Search-as-you-Type (SayT) see below links.
    http://code.google.com/p/search-as-you-type/
    And their demo video on

    The name of search-as-you-type was coined by me and used as our branded product and this can be clearly seen in the newspaper articles in my blog.
    http://searchasyoutype.wordpress.com/about
    There are also two videos made in 1991 which can also be seen from this blog.
    Watching these videos it can be clearly seen that the data is accessed in the same way as shown in the above Google demo!

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFb87HRbKYQ

    My product Autodispens used search-as-you-type everywhere and not just for accessing data. I believe that every type of “real time parsing algorithm” application is covered in this extensive program and this was done in DOS and on the very first PC’s. Am I going to have to pay royalties to use my own product done in 1989!
    Until 2008 software in the UK was not patentable but was automatically covered under the copyright law. Is the US undermining UK copyright laws! There are dozens of concepts that I have developed based on this. Please don’t hesitate to contact me if there is any question you wish to ask me.