This post is author's personal opinion and he is not associated either with Apple, Samsung or Legal entity
Recently, the court has ruled a temporary ban on samsung nexus for having an infringed "all in one search" in the android OS. The verge version of the news is here.
Let us dissect the patent .US8086604, which was granted in Dec 2011 and applied by Apple in Dec 2004. Here is abstract from the patent
The present invention provides convenient access to items of information that are related to various descriptors input by a user, by means of a unitary interface which is capable of accessing information in a variety of locations, through a number of different techniques. Using a plurality of heuristic algorithms to operate upon information descriptors input by the user, the present invention locates and displays candidate items of information for selection and/or retrieval. Thus, the advantages of a search engine can be exploited, while listing only relevant object candidate items of information
In simple words, the invention is about searching information in multiple sources.. ( for e.g when you enter "setting" it the query is sent to multiple search engines/algorithms which results relevant results related to the word "settings" e.g Settings App with the phone, "Settings in the subject of your local email box..etc" - The big question, Does anyone else have patent or used this approach before ? Has someone already made a similar product/service available before Dec,1, 2004 which can invalidate the claims of Apple's "novelty" in the invention ?? Can Samsung be benefit from these prior art ?
Here are few patents that I believe helps protecting the features.
- US7346613 - Microsoft patent titled "System and method for a unified and blended search", applied around 10 months before Apple. The abstract of the invention is
A system, method, and computer-accessible medium for a unified search of disparate resources are provided. The system and method determine the most relevant disparate resources in which to search and blend the most relevant results from the search for presentation to the user in an integrated manner.
Oh No !! - Should Samsung/Google approach Microsoft for the licensing this patent !! ??. One must remember - the top leader in search - Google , wont they have filed patent in this domain of search ? The answer follows..
Lets do a quick finding on Samsung's patents related to "Search". Samsung being strongly involved in mobile standardization than mobile operating or search domain. The "search" for samsung are in the context of "cell search" - a typical essential functionality of all phone/modems to keep looking for neighbor cells, that helps phone to hand-over to other cell or even fall-back to other technology so the phone remains in connected state with the cellular network. Lets fall back to "web search". Samsung's non-cellular related search are in Image and Video searches e.g. us7317909, (I was bit surprised to see this). One of the minimalistic relevant patent by Samsung found is titled Method for displaying internet search results, Filed in Jan 1991 !!,
Systems and methods for generating multiple implicit search queries are described. In one described system, a query system receives a user context attribute and generates a plurality of implicit search queries based at least in part on the user context attribute. The query system then receives result sets associated with each of the plurality of implicit search queries and combines the results for display to a user.
Alternatively, Samsung may look for other startups or smaller companies who may patents relevant for this unified search filed before Dec 2004. One such I across is this "Searching tool and process for unified search using categories and keywords", by Exalead Corporation (Paris, FR) filed in August 2001.
Your comments are welcome
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