Yet another local patent hitting the presses. Maybe it’s just me, but this feels like it’s getting really out of hand. This one is a 2005 submitted patent for mining geo-reference context from web pages. Pretty tough to be original when geo-coded web pages existed for a decade.
I’d be pretty darn shocked if Tim Nye or Mike Bauer can’t produce a boat load of prior art to make this one go back on the shelf. Bauer was geocoding the internic database back when we met in Pittsburgh in 1995, and I know Tim Nye cut his teeth on advanced interpretation of geodata from website crawling long before 2005.
This appears to have been an “acquired patent” and I don’t know - it all this just feels like an IR-driven move. Is anyone else getting tired of this?
Update: Peter K gives more insight into the situation, and I’d de-classify it as an acquired patent, as it was owned by a person who is now working at the company. Kind of a revealing profile of intention. Sigh.
Do I understand correctly, under this patent no one is allowed to auto match zip codes with a web location?
Can Yellowpages.com have a directory or webpage linked to 90210 with local content when a user just types 90210?
Left by Dennis on June 26th, 2007