Only yesterday when I was browsing through the web, researching for something, I stumbled upon a fact which caught me flabbergasted. And it is an indictor of the pace at which the world around us is changing (read developing).

I read that Google was granted about 14 Patents by the USPTO yesterday, i.e. 9^th August 2011. Apple obtained 21. Upon having seen the patent documents, while brushing aside the controversies of patent trolls, rising patent litigations, licensing wars, etc., I realize how there are people out there trying to make our lives simpler and better every second.

Restricting myself to few of those 14 patents which Google obtained, those pertain to subject matters, which are so simple, yet so pertinent!

Just when you sit to search anything over the internet, which inevitably for most of us is processed through Google, we start to process how we should arrange our search terms, those keywords, in order to have the most relevant search results. And here Google presents, a system which may include a memory and a processor. The memory may store information relating to prior searches. The processor may identify an entity name, generate variations of the entity name, and evaluate each of the variations of the entity name based on information relating to prior searches to determine whether to include the variations of the entity name in a table. The processor may use the table to rewrite a search query prior to performing a search based on the search query.[1]

Another patent relates to a method may include receiving a search query that contains a keyword, identifying multiple documents related to the search query, extracting a keyword candidate from at least one document of the multiple documents, creating a pair that includes the keyword candidate and information associated with the at least one document, calculating a frequency that the keyword candidate appears in search queries, calculating a frequency that the pair appears in the multiple documents, correlating the information associated with the at least one document with a category, determining whether the keyword candidate is a keyword for the category based on the calculated frequencies, determining ranks of the multiple documents based on the keyword and the category, sorting the multiple documents based on the ranks, and generating search results based on the sorted multiple documents.[2]

Such inventions are bringing us more and more to interactive-intelligent-thinking machines.

Another set of patents are such they will prove to be a boon for the advertisers over the internet. One of them relates to a computer-implemented method for generating a graphical advertisement. Text and a request to generate a graphical advertisement associated with the text is received. Graphics and words for the graphical advertisement are suggested based on the text. A selection of at least one of the suggested graphics and words is received. A keyword is suggested to associate with the graphical advertisement. A selected keyword is received. The graphical advertisement is associated with the selected keyword. A graphical advertisement is automatically generated using the selected at least one of the suggested graphics and words.[3]

Another one pertains to helping advertisers by simplifying the management of interactive advertising. Such simplification can by achieved by allowing an advertiser to pause the serving of an ad, or some grouping of ads. The pausing may continue for a predetermined time period, until a specified time and/or date, or until a restart is selected.[4]

These may not be one of those break-through inventions, but how very subtly they get incorporated in our systems and assist us while we work, are things which we tend to ignore sometimes.

Meet the new tools, which tend to become weapons, if fiddled with unauthorisedly. So, if it’s raining patents, varying in quantity, there are bound to be patent wars.

[1]U.S. Patent No. 7,996,419, available at: http://www.patexia.com/patents/07996419

[2]U.S. Patent No. 7,996,393, available at: http://www.patexia.com/patents/07996393

[3]U.S. Patent No. 7,996,753, available at: http://www.patexia.com/patents/07996753

[4]U.S. Patent No. 7,996,874 available at: http://www.patexia.com/patents/07996874