Christine Churchill has an article at Search Engine Watch on Understanding Search Engine Patents that’s worth a look.
In it she describes some of the potential pitfalls of placing too much credibility in a patent application released by one of the search engines. It’s a warning worth heeding.
In addition, she describes four presentations on search engine patent applications at a recent Search Engine Strategies conference. I wish I could have seen these presentations. It’s a good thing that Christine has shared them with us.
I spend some time every week digging through the new patents and patent applications from Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, and others. Some interesting stuff shows up, from time to time.
For instance, would you consider comparing blogging to an infectious disease? A paper on how infectious diseases spread has inspired a couple of patent applications from IBM on Blogging, and how information spreads through blogs.