Google and Its Selective Access Patent Document
July 29, 2011
Keep in mind that I am not a legal eagle. Eagles of any type make me nervous. As a goose in Harrod’s Creek, I did find the patent application, dated July 28, 2011, US20110185412, “Providing Selective Access to a Web Site” thought provoking. Googler Arturo E. Crespo and Louis Vincent Perrochon filed an application in April 2011, but it popped out of the USPTO’s intellectual kitchen yesterday. What’s it about? Here’s the abstract:
A restricted web site has features that are selectively exposed to clients. A screening web site interacts with clients and collects data about the clients using passive and/or active techniques. The screening site generates a token for the client, and includes data in the token identifying the token and describing the client. The token is encoded in a cookie and saved in the client’s web browser. The client subsequently provides the token to the restricted site. The restricted site validates the token to ensure that it is legitimate, has not expired, and has not been used before. The restricted site selects one or more features to provide to the client based on the data about the client in the token and/or on other information. If the client does not present a token or the token is invalid, the restricted site does not expose any features to the client.
If you are an old hand at US patent lingo, you will want to spend a few minutes considering the Claims. The diagram below points to a “screening” site which interacts with “restricted” site.
Source: US20110185412
The notion of “selective access” is nuanced, deep, and interesting. Are there potential applications beyond navigation of password protected sites? Is it possible to take selective outputs and formulate a new construct? Are selectively extracted components in a form such that each can be stored in a Programmable Search Engine? No answers yet. Keep in mind that a patent application is nothing more than an open source document which in some cases may be science fiction or an exercise of some type.
Stephen E Arnold, July 29, 2011
Freebie, just like access to the wonderful USPTO search and retrieval system
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