Ever wonder who owns the patent for local search? Of course not, because being able to search for local restaurants, transportation, or classified listings online is kind of too obvious to be patented, right?Apparently not. Local.com has picked up a patent for local search. Patent 7,231,405 refers to a process for "indexing and retrieving web-related information by geographical location."
Does this mean that Google, Yahoo!, Craigslist, and pretty much any other service that provides the ability to filter search results geographically will have to license technology from Local.com? Nope. The patent refers to one method of conducting location-based search.
Still, it sounds about as patentable as saying Download Squad would like exclusive rights to a certain method for using email tips, RSS feeds, and common knowledge to write blog entires about news and information about software and web services.
[via Search Engine Land]
