List of software patents
Encyclopedia
This is a categorized list of notable patent
s and patent application
s involving computer program
s, often labelled software patent
s. Software patents cover a wide range of topics and there is therefore important debate about whether such subject-matter should be excluded from patent protection. However, there is no official way of identifying software patents and different researchers have devised their own ways of doing so.
This article lists patents relating to software which have been the subject of litigation or have achieved notoriety in other ways. Notable patent applications are also listed and comparisons made between corresponding patents and patent applications in different countries. The patents and patent applications are categorised according to the subject matter of the patent or the particular field in which the patent had an effect that brought it into the public view.
- (Main article: Alcatel-Lucent v. Microsoft
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Patent
A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....
s and patent application
Patent application
A patent application is a request pending at a patent office for the grant of a patent for the invention described and claimed by that application. An application consists of a description of the invention , together with official forms and correspondence relating to the application...
s involving computer program
Computer program
A computer program is a sequence of instructions written to perform a specified task with a computer. A computer requires programs to function, typically executing the program's instructions in a central processor. The program has an executable form that the computer can use directly to execute...
s, often labelled software patent
Software patent
Software patent does not have a universally accepted definition. One definition suggested by the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure is that a software patent is a "patent on any performance of a computer realised by means of a computer program".In 2005, the European Patent Office...
s. Software patents cover a wide range of topics and there is therefore important debate about whether such subject-matter should be excluded from patent protection. However, there is no official way of identifying software patents and different researchers have devised their own ways of doing so.
This article lists patents relating to software which have been the subject of litigation or have achieved notoriety in other ways. Notable patent applications are also listed and comparisons made between corresponding patents and patent applications in different countries. The patents and patent applications are categorised according to the subject matter of the patent or the particular field in which the patent had an effect that brought it into the public view.
Business methods
| Number | Comments | Other family Patent family A patent family is "a set of patents taken in various countries to protect a single invention ." In other words, a patent family is "the same invention disclosed by a common inventor and patented in more than one country."- See also :* Continuing patent application* Triadic patent* INPADOC... members |
Earliest filing date |
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| (Main article: State Street Bank v. Signature Financial Group) | This patent was at the center of a US Federal Circuit United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit -Vacancies and pending nominations:-List of former judges:-Chief judges:Notwithstanding the foregoing, when the court was initially created, Congress had to resolve which chief judge of the predecessor courts would become the first chief judge... judgment in 1998 which confirmed that business methods implemented on a computer are patentable in the US since they produced a "useful, concrete and tangible result". The claim Claim (patent) Patent claims are the part of a patent or patent application that defines the scope of protection granted by the patent. The claims define, in technical terms, the extent of the protection conferred by a patent, or the protection sought in a patent application... s of the corresponding European patent application were rejected by the European Patent Office European Patent Office The European Patent Office is one of the two organs of the European Patent Organisation , the other being the Administrative Council. The EPO acts as executive body for the Organisation while the Administrative Council acts as its supervisory body as well as, to a limited extent, its legislative... (EPO) as relating to unpatentable subject matter. |
1991-03-11 | |
| (Main article: 1-Click 1-Click 1-Click, also called one-click or one-click buying, is the technique of allowing customers to make online purchases with a single click, with the payment information needed to complete the purchase already entered by the user previously. More particularly, it allows an online shopper using an... ) |
Amazon.com Amazon.com Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and... sued Barnes & Noble Barnes & Noble Barnes & Noble, Inc. is the largest book retailer in the United States, operating mainly through its Barnes & Noble Booksellers chain of bookstores headquartered at 122 Fifth Avenue in the Flatiron District in Manhattan in New York City. Barnes & Noble also operated the chain of small B. Dalton... for violating its "One click buy" but the case was ultimately settled. Amazon has so far failed to obtain a similar patent in Europe. |
1997-09-12 | |
| (Main article: Aerotel v Telco and Macrossan's Application Aerotel v Telco and Macrossan's Application Aerotel v Telco and Macrossan's Application is a judgment by the Court of Appeal of England and Wales. The judgment was passed down on 27 October 2006 and relates to two different appeals from decisions of the High Court. The first case involved granted to Aerotel Ltd and their infringement action... ) |
Although granted in several non-European countries, the patent application was refused as relating to excluded subject matter under UK law Software patents under United Kingdom patent law There are four over-riding requirements for a patent to be granted under United Kingdom patent law. Firstly, there must have been an invention. That invention must be novel, inventive and susceptible of industrial application... as being a method of doing business and a program for a computer as such. The case law developed in refusing this patent application forms the basis for the current practice of the UK Intellectual Property Office (UK-IPO) when deciding whether to grant patent applications involving excluded subject matter such as computer programs. The EPO have refused to search for prior art Prior art Prior art , in most systems of patent law, constitutes all information that has been made available to the public in any form before a given date that might be relevant to a patent's claims of originality... that might be relevant to the corresponding European patent application, stating that such a search would serve no useful purpose since the application solves no technical problem. |
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2000-11-23 |
| Accenture Accenture Accenture plc is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company headquartered in Dublin, Republic of Ireland. It is the largest consulting firm in the world and is a Fortune Global 500 company. As of September 2011, the company had more than 236,000 employees across... sued Guidewire Software Guidewire Software Guidewire Software Inc., commonly just Guidewire, is a privately-held American corporation based in San Mateo, California. It offers core backend systems for property and casualty insurance carriers in the U.S... in December 2007, alleging their infringement of this insurance technology patent. Accenture alleged that Guidewire infringed the US patent protecting an insurance claims management technology that Accenture developed and licenses to the insurance industry. Intellectual property suits are not common in the insurance software market and this suit may represent a new front in the intellectual property wars according to one analyst. |
1999-05-04 |
Data compression in general
- (Main article: Stac Electronics) - also granted as - now expired- Stac ElectronicsStac ElectronicsStac Electronics, originally incorporated as State of the Art Consulting and later shortened to Stac, Inc, was a technology company founded in 1983...
sued MicrosoftMicrosoftMicrosoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
for patent infringement when Microsoft introduced the DoubleSpaceDoubleSpaceDriveSpace is a disk compression utility supplied with MS-DOS starting from version 6.0. The purpose of DriveSpace is to increase the amount of data the user could store on disks, by transparently compressing and decompressing data on-the-fly. It is primarily intended for use with hard drives, but...
data compression scheme into MS-DOSMS-DOSMS-DOS is an operating system for x86-based personal computers. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems, and was the main operating system for IBM PC compatible personal computers during the 1980s to the mid 1990s, until it was gradually superseded by operating...
. Stac was awarded $120 million by a jury in 1994 and Microsoft was ordered to recall versions of MS-DOS with the infringing technology.
Audio compression
- (Main article: MP3)- One of several patents covering the MP3MP3MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...
format owned by the Fraunhofer SocietyFraunhofer SocietyThe Fraunhofer Society is a German research organization with 60 institutes spread throughout Germany, each focusing on different fields of applied science . It employs around 18,000, mainly scientists and engineers, with an annual research budget of about €1.65 billion...
which led to the development of the Ogg Vorbis format as an alternative to MP3.
- (Main article: Alcatel-Lucent v. Microsoft
Alcatel-Lucent v. Microsoft
Lucent Technologies Inc. v. Gateway Inc. 470 F.Supp.2d 1180 is a patent case between Alcatel-Lucent and Microsoft litigated in the United States District Court for the Southern District of California and appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The litigation money...
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- Two patents owned by Alcatel-LucentAlcatel-LucentAlcatel-Lucent is a global telecommunications corporation, headquartered in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, France. It provides telecommunications solutions to service providers, enterprises, and governments around the world, enabling these customers to deliver voice, data, and video services...
relating to MP3 technology under which they sued MicrosoftMicrosoftMicrosoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
for $1.5 billion. Microsoft thought they had already licensed the technology from Fraunhofer, and this case illustrates one of the basic principles of patents that a license does not necessarily permit the licensee to work the technology, but merely prevents the licensee from being sued by the licensor.
Image compression
(Main article: GIF)- UnisysUnisysUnisys Corporation , headquartered in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, United States, and incorporated in Delaware, is a long established business whose core products now involves computing and networking.-History:...
's patent on LZWLZWLempel–Ziv–Welch is a universal lossless data compression algorithm created by Abraham Lempel, Jacob Ziv, and Terry Welch. It was published by Welch in 1984 as an improved implementation of the LZ78 algorithm published by Lempel and Ziv in 1978...
compression, a fundamental part of the widely used GIFGIFThe Graphics Interchange Format is a bitmap image format that was introduced by CompuServe in 1987 and has since come into widespread usage on the World Wide Web due to its wide support and portability....
graphics format. (Main article: Forgent NetworksForgent NetworksAsure Software is a software company which has licensing as its primary revenue source. Prior to September 13, 2007, the company was known as Forgent Networks. Critics claim Asure profits primarily as a patent troll...
) - Forgent NetworksForgent NetworksAsure Software is a software company which has licensing as its primary revenue source. Prior to September 13, 2007, the company was known as Forgent Networks. Critics claim Asure profits primarily as a patent troll...
claimed this patent, granted in 1987, covered the JPEGJPEGIn computing, JPEG . The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and image quality. JPEG typically achieves 10:1 compression with little perceptible loss in image quality....
image compression format. The broadest claims were found to be invalid in 2005 following re-examination by the US Patent and Trademark OfficeUnited States Patent and Trademark OfficeThe United States Patent and Trademark Office is an agency in the United States Department of Commerce that issues patents to inventors and businesses for their inventions, and trademark registration for product and intellectual property identification.The USPTO is based in Alexandria, Virginia,...
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- This patent, owned by Lizardtech, Inc., was the subject of infringement proceedings against companies including Earth Resource Mapping, Inc. However, Lizardtech lost the trial on the grounds that an important part of their invention was the step of "maintaining updated sums of discrete wavelet transform coefficients from the discrete tile image to form a seamless discrete wavelet transform of the image". Claim 21 of the patent lacked this feature and was therefore obvious. The remaining claims contained this feature, but were not infringed by ERM. Internet buzz suggested the patent covered the JPEG 2000JPEG 2000JPEG 2000 is an image compression standard and coding system. It was created by the Joint Photographic Experts Group committee in 2000 with the intention of superseding their original discrete cosine transform-based JPEG standard with a newly designed, wavelet-based method...
image compression format but the additional feature of the valid claims appears not to be a JPEG 2000 requirement.
Video compression
| Number | Comments | Other family Patent family A patent family is "a set of patents taken in various countries to protect a single invention ." In other words, a patent family is "the same invention disclosed by a common inventor and patented in more than one country."- See also :* Continuing patent application* Triadic patent* INPADOC... members |
Earliest filing - Grant dates |
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| (Main article: - ) | A Microsoft Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions... patent covering a method of encapsulating multiple streams of data into a data stream that is implemented in the Advanced Systems Format Advanced Systems Format Advanced Systems Format is Microsoft's proprietary digital audio/digital video container format, especially meant for streaming media... . The author of the open source Open source The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology... video capture tool, VirtualDub VirtualDub VirtualDub is a video capture and video processing utility for Microsoft Windows written by Avery Lee.It is designed to process linear video streams, including filtering and recompression... , which is licensed under GPL alleged that an employee of Microsoft Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions... requested that he remove support for ASF from his program. The author has said that he does not have the money to pay for a license under the patent and that he would not take a free license that placed restrictions on future uses of his code in violation of GPL. |
- | 1996-03-08 - 2000-03-21 |
Data encryption
| Number | Comments | Other family Patent family A patent family is "a set of patents taken in various countries to protect a single invention ." In other words, a patent family is "the same invention disclosed by a common inventor and patented in more than one country."- See also :* Continuing patent application* Triadic patent* INPADOC... members |
Earliest filing - Grant dates |
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| (Main article: RSA ) | A software patent describing the ground-breaking RSA algorithm for public-key cryptography Public-key cryptography Public-key cryptography refers to a cryptographic system requiring two separate keys, one to lock or encrypt the plaintext, and one to unlock or decrypt the cyphertext. Neither key will do both functions. One of these keys is published or public and the other is kept private... , still used for secure communications today. |
- | 1977-12-14 - 1983-09-20 |
Gaming systems
(Main article: Menashe v. William HillMenashe v. William Hill
Menashe Business Mercantile Ltd. & Anor v William Hill Organization Ltd. was a patent case that was particularly important regarding Internet usage. The case addressed a European patent covering the United Kingdom for an invention referred to as "Interactive, computerized gaming system with remote...
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- A patent for a gaming system that has particular importance regarding InternetInternetThe Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
usage. A server running the game was located outside the UK but could be used within the UK. The Court of Appeal of England and WalesCourt of Appeal of England and WalesThe Court of Appeal of England and Wales is the second most senior court in the English legal system, with only the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom above it...
judged that the patent was being infringed by virtue of the sale of CDs in the UK containing software intended to put the invention into effect in the UK.
Image processing
also granted as - (Main article: Photographic mosaicPhotographic mosaic
In the field of photographic imaging, a photographic mosaic, also known under the term Photomosaic, a portmanteau of photo and mosaic, is a picture that has been divided into rectangular sections, each of which is replaced with another photograph that matches the target photo...
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- Robert Silver's patent on his photographic mosaicing technique. The UK part of the European patent is currently undergoing revocation proceedings, the results of which may be important in comparing the practice of the UK Patent OfficeSoftware patents under United Kingdom patent lawThere are four over-riding requirements for a patent to be granted under United Kingdom patent law. Firstly, there must have been an invention. That invention must be novel, inventive and susceptible of industrial application...
with that of the European Patent OfficeSoftware patents under the European Patent ConventionThe patentability of software, computer programs and computer-implemented inventions under the European Patent Convention is the extent to which subject matter in these fields is patentable under the Convention on the Grant of European Patents of October 5, 1973...
. (Main article: Shadow volumeShadow volumeShadow volume is a technique used in 3D computer graphics to add shadows to a rendered scene. They were first proposed by Frank Crow in 1977 as the geometry describing the 3D shape of the region occluded from a light source...
) - A patent covering the technique commonly known as Carmack's Reverse
Internet tools
| Number | Comments | Other family Patent family A patent family is "a set of patents taken in various countries to protect a single invention ." In other words, a patent family is "the same invention disclosed by a common inventor and patented in more than one country."- See also :* Continuing patent application* Triadic patent* INPADOC... members |
Earliest filing - Grant dates |
|---|---|---|---|
| (Main article: - ) | Eolas Eolas Eolas is a United States technology company. It was founded in 1994 by sole employee Michael David Doyle. His University of California, San Francisco team has claimed to have created the first web browser that supported plugins... successfully sued Microsoft Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions... for $521 million for the "browser plugin patent". |
- | 1994-10-17 - 1998-11-17 |
| (Main article: - ) | British Telecom believed that this patent might cover web hyperlinks and tried enforcing it against Prodigy as a test case in British Telecommunications Plc. v. Prodigy British Telecommunications Plc. v. Prodigy British Telecommunications Plc. v. Prodigy was a patent infringement case which determined whether a patent related to communications between central computers and their clients was infringed by Internet service providers through hyperlinks... . After costly litigation, a court found for Prodigy, ruling that British Telecom's patent did not actually cover web hyperlinks. |
- | 1976-07-20 - 1989-10-10 |
| (Main article: - ) | This patent is one of several owned Tumbleweed Communications Tumbleweed Communications Tumbleweed Communications Corp. provided secure messaging and secure file transfer solutions for enterprise and government customers. Tumbleweed Communications merged with Axway in 2008.... and relates to a document delivery system that generates a unique URL Uniform Resource Locator In computing, a uniform resource locator or universal resource locator is a specific character string that constitutes a reference to an Internet resource.... for intended recipients of a document in order to deliver that document. Tumbleweed has licensed this and related patents in their patent portfolio to 29 companies. They have also filed several patent infringement Patent infringement Patent infringement is the commission of a prohibited act with respect to a patented invention without permission from the patent holder. Permission may typically be granted in the form of a license. The definition of patent infringement may vary by jurisdiction, but it typically includes using or... lawsuits. All of the suits have been settled Settlement (law) In law, a settlement is a resolution between disputing parties about a legal case, reached either before or after court action begins. The term "settlement" also has other meanings in the context of law.-Basis:... but full details of the settlements, including, in some cases, whether or not any license fees have been paid, have not been made available. Overall, however, Tumbleweed earns about 10% of its revenue from patent licensing and 90% of its revenue from selling products and services. |
- | 1996-10-24 - 2001-02-20 |
Search engines
(Main article: Yahoo! Search MarketingYahoo! Search Marketing
Yahoo! Search Marketing is a keyword-based "Pay per click" or "Sponsored search" Internet advertising service provided by Yahoo!.Yahoo began offering this service after acquiring Overture Services, Inc....
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- A patent relating to pay-per-click Internet search engine advertising. Originally filed by Goto.com, Inc. (renamed Overture Services, Inc.Yahoo! Search MarketingYahoo! Search Marketing is a keyword-based "Pay per click" or "Sponsored search" Internet advertising service provided by Yahoo!.Yahoo began offering this service after acquiring Overture Services, Inc....
), GoogleGoogleGoogle Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
and FindWhatMIVAMIVA is an initialism that can refer to:* The Midwestern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association - NCAA Men's Volleyball* The Marshall Islands Visitor Authority in the Republic of the Marshall Islands...
were both sued for infringement prior to Overture's acquisition by Yahoo!Yahoo!Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...
Telecommunications
- Washington Research Foundation asserted this patent in December 2006 against Matsushita (owners of the Panasonic brand), Nokia and Samsung. Granted in October 2006 (originating from a 1996 filing) it relates to dynamically varying the passband bandwidth of a tuner. If the claims had been upheld, CSR plcCSR plcCSR , or Cambridge Silicon Radio, is a company based in Cambridge, England. CSR is a fabless semiconductor company whose main product lines include connectivity, audio and location chips. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index...
(previously known as Cambridge Silicon Radio), who supply the defendants with Bluetooth chips, could have lost market share to Broadcom who already had a license under the patent. Despite believing that the infringement suit was without merit, CSR agreed to pay WRF $15m in return for an undertaking that WRF would not sue CSR, its suppliers, customers, or end users. - One of three patents granted in respect of Karmarkar's algorithmKarmarkar's algorithmKarmarkar's algorithm is an algorithm introduced by Narendra Karmarkar in 1984 for solving linear programming problems. It was the first reasonably efficient algorithm that solves these problems in polynomial time...
, which relates to linear programming problems. Claim 1 of this patent suggests the algorithm should be applied to the allocation of telecommunication transmission facilities among subscribers.
User interfaces
and related to- Immersion CorporationImmersion CorporationImmersion Corporation of San Jose, California, is a developer of haptic technology.The company was founded in 1993. Immersion's technology is employed in automotive, entertainment, medical training, mobility, personal computing, and three-dimensional simulation applications. Immersion's patent...
sued SonySony, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....
under these US patents in 2002. They relate to force-feedback technology such as that used in PlayStation 2PlayStation 2The PlayStation 2 is a sixth-generation video game console manufactured by Sony as part of the PlayStation series. Its development was announced in March 1999 and it was first released on March 4, 2000, in Japan...
DualShockDualShockThe DualShock is a line of vibration-feedback gamepads by Sony for the PlayStation, PlayStation 2, and PlayStation 3 video game consoles. The DualShock was introduced in Japan in late 1997, and launched in the North American market in May 1998...
controllers. Sony lost the case and Immersion were awarded $90.7 million, an injunction (stayed pending appeal), and a compulsory license. The claims of the related European patent application require the device to be attached to a body part and were, in any event, refused by the examining division of the European Patent OfficeEuropean Patent OfficeThe European Patent Office is one of the two organs of the European Patent Organisation , the other being the Administrative Council. The EPO acts as executive body for the Organisation while the Administrative Council acts as its supervisory body as well as, to a limited extent, its legislative...
for lacking an inventive step.
- The patent relates to a progress barProgress barA progress bar is a component in a graphical user interface used to convey the progress of a task, such as a download or file transfer. Often, the graphic is accompanied by a textual representation of the progress in a percent format....
. Filed in 1989, it was highlighted in 2005 by Richard StallmanRichard StallmanRichard Matthew Stallman , often shortened to rms,"'Richard Stallman' is just my mundane name; you can call me 'rms'"|last= Stallman|first= Richard|date= N.D.|work=Richard Stallman's homepage...
in New ScientistNew ScientistNew Scientist is a weekly non-peer-reviewed English-language international science magazine, which since 1996 has also run a website, covering recent developments in science and technology for a general audience. Founded in 1956, it is published by Reed Business Information Ltd, a subsidiary of...
and The GuardianThe GuardianThe Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
as an example of a software patent granted by the European Patent OfficeEuropean Patent OrganisationThe European Patent Organisation is a public international organisation created in 1977 by its contracting states to grant patents in Europe under the European Patent Convention of 1973...
, that would impede software development and would be dangerous. The claims as granted describe a process of breaking down a task to be performed by a computer into a number of equal task units and updating a display each time a unit is completed and therefore does not cover progress bars which operate in different ways.
Notable due to proprietor hyperbole
- Owned at various times by Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. and Compton's NewMedia, Inc. this patent was granted in August 1993. Just a few months later, in November 1993, Compton's announced that "Everything that is now multimedia and computer-based utilizes this invention" and tried to use the patent to ensure that everyone licensed their software. Although a cursory review of the granted claims showed this statement to be mere hyperbole, there was nonetheless an outcry from the industry and the patent was revoked following re-examination. and
- Patents owned by ScientigoScientigoScientigo is a United States company based in Charlotte, North Carolina that began asserting patent claims over XML technology in 2005. Since SGML , from which XML is derived, dates from the 1960s, and the patents were applied for in 1997, the notion that Scientigo's patents cover XML has been...
and claimed by them to cover the markup language XMLXMLExtensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
, a notion rejected by patent attorneys and other commentators including Microsoft.
Notable due to misconception
- Emoticon keyboard button patent application.- Early in 2006, rumours circulated on the Internet that Cingular WirelessCingular WirelessAT&T Mobility LLC is a wholly owned subsidiary of AT&T that provides wireless services to 100.7 million subscribers in the United States, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands...
had patented the emoticonEmoticonAn emoticon is a facial expression pictorially represented by punctuation and letters, usually to express a writer’s mood. Emoticons are often used to alert a responder to the tenor or temper of a statement, and can change and improve interpretation of plain text. The word is a portmanteau word...
and, in particular, had patented the concept of using emoticons on mobile phones. This resulted in a great deal of anger directed at the US Patent Office that such patents should never have been granted. Ultimately, it was pointed out that it was only a published patent application, not a granted patent, and that the claims of the patent application actually related to a mobile phone with a dedicated button for inserting emoticons. - This patent application is currently being examined by the US patent office. All of the originally filed claims were rejected on 22 February 2007 as being known or obvious, although the rejection was not final. The corresponding European patent application has yet to be examined.
- This design patentDesign patentIn the United States, a design patent is a patent granted on the ornamental design of a functional item. Design patents are a type of industrial design right. Ornamental designs of jewelry, furniture, beverage containers and computer icons are examples of objects that are covered by design...
was granted to GoogleGoogleGoogle Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
on 1 September 2009 for the simple and clean appearance of their homepage from five years earlier. Referred to in the media as a patentPatentA patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....
, it received criticism for not being as original as Google's web search technology and was held up as evidence that the US patent system was broken. The New York Times said that Google now had the right to sue anyone who used a similarly no-frills website. However, a "design patent" is not the same as a "patent" (sometimes referred to as a "utility patent") since it provides only limited protection for ornamental appearance. Design patents are typically hard to infringe and even Google's own homepage at the time the design patent was granted was almost certainly different enough from the design patent that it did not infringe it.