Google Awarded Broad Patent For Location-Based Advertising 54
Mashable has a report of a patent that just issued (6-1/2 years after filing) — apparently Google now has a lock on location-based advertising. It's not clear that the search company intends to assert the patent against any other companies (such as emerging rival Apple), but it's useful as leverage. Here is the patent.
Update: 03/02 14:34 GMT by S : Reader butlerm noted that the incorrect patent was linked. It now points to the correct URL.
Wrong patent (Score:3, Informative)
The link both in the original post and in the cited article (to say nothing of dozens of other articles) cites the wrong patent.
The correct one is patent application 20050050027 [arnoldit.com], but the patent number seems to be harder to track down. In fact I am not sure it has been granted at all.
The incorrectly linked patent [uspto.gov] is about remote ad selection for broadcast radio stations, which is not particularly relevant here.
Re:Wrong patent (Score:5, Informative)
After a little more checking: The correct patent is patent 7,668,832 granted Feb 23, 2010 as listed here [uspto.gov]
Note to web log authors: You can't use just any old URL. Some URLs have content that changes over time. The PTO web site may return a different patent every day if you don't actually query (and thus generate a URL based on) patent number.