From Market Wire - “Local.com Granted U.S. Patent Number 7,231,405 for Location-based Search“:
The patent covers local search technology related to identifying location information from web documents, indexing that information and making it searchable geographically. In Local.com’s commercial implementation of the technology, the search results are ranked by search term, LocalRank score, location prominence, among other factors. The system then extracts, matches and indexes web pages from the Internet and generates web references where applicable on more than 16 million local businesses listed nationwide on Local.com.
So in a nutshell, the patent granted to Local.com covers technology that searches the web for names, addresses, and phone numbers of businesses for indexing. Hmm… isn’t that what just about every local search does?
Here’s what I see happening with this:
- Local.com gives other search companies a window to start paying for their technology
- After the window expires, Local.com begins to look at other local searches to see if they’re doing something covered by their patent
- Sue City
What makes me say that? In the above referenced press release, Heath Clarke, the company’s Chairman and CEO says this:
We are very pleased to announce the granting of the patent number 7,231,405 as we believe the methods covered have subsequently become the de-facto standard for information retrieval in the local search industry. […] We encourage other local search companies that are interested in using our intellectual property to enter into licensing agreements with Local.com.
Doesn’t get much more clear than that.
I hope this doesn’t turn into the mess it could potentially become. With companies patenting just about anything they can think of to “invent”, innovation is slowly being killed off and replaced by a game to see who can merge patents from other companies together in the best way.
Really makes you want to get out there and try to create something new doesn’t it? Oh wait… I bet “inventing something” has already been patented. Darn.
