Today in Patent Trolls: Vuestar

Thursday, May 29th, 2008

Biggs is the editor of TechCrunch Gadgets. Biggs has written for the New York Times, InSync, USA Weekend, Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, Money and a number of other outlets on technology and wristwatches. He is the former editor-in-chief of Gizmodo.com and lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. You can Tweet him here and G+ him here. Email him directly at john@techcrunch.com. → Learn More

The internet has a few kinds of links, but the most common are text and image links. For example, I can link this image of VueStar’s logo:

To a website featuring stuff on a cat (luckily I’m in a good mood or you guys would have been in for a surprise). It’s one of the backbones of our freedom. Sadly, VueStar patented a system for Method of locating web-pages by utilising visual images, which is kind of like creating a patent to identify a goat on sight.

“If your site is only text and has no images, icons or other patent methods then no license required,” Vuestar says.

That said, we encourage everyone to remove all images immediately. But wait, there’s more. According to U.S. law, the results of “ordinary innovation” cannot be patented. The patent could hold in Singapore, though, given that country’s patent law.

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