Esquire Doodles? How Original!

By  |  Sunday, March 27, 2011 at 6:58 pm

As The Business Insider’s Matt Rosoff reported, Google received a long-sought patent last week on Google Doodles, the customized logos it uses to celebrate various themes. I imagine that its lawyers are even now preparing a stern letter to Esquire, which shamelessly stole the Doodles concept for the logo for the “Special British Issue” it published in April 1958OH WAIT...

 
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  1. Frank Says:
    March 27th, 2011 at 7:39 pm

    You mean a strong letter to Esquire, right?

  2. craig kenesk Says:
    March 27th, 2011 at 7:42 pm

    Even now, Google lawyers are sitting in the hot tub time machine, preparing to go back in time to enter a retroactive cease and desist order. craig kensek

  3. johnwbaxter Says:
    March 27th, 2011 at 7:50 pm

    Here's an interesting case in which "prior art" is art in the common English sense as well as in the patent approval legal sense.

  4. @ziquemu Says:
    March 27th, 2011 at 8:01 pm

    I think you mean "I imagine that its lawyers are even now preparing a stern letter to Esquire" rather than Google 🙂 Though in fairness, Esquire's logotype looks like it remained the same with a different background and the letters in Esquire broken apart, rather than recolored, drawn upon, using items to substitute for letter, etc. (or that's probably what the lawyers would say). ____I actually find it more interesting to see a magazine cover with so much open space and so little text on the cover. Let's see if Google can retain THOSE qualities …

  5. The_Heraclitus Says:
    March 28th, 2011 at 6:22 am

    "Section 101 of the U.S. Patent Act sets forth the general requirements for a utility patent:

    Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvements thereof, may obtain a patent, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
    In other words, for an invention to be patentable it must:

    be new,
    be useful, and
    be nonobvious."

    In other words, the VAST majority of tech patents issued don't really qualify…

  6. patent litigation Says:
    April 5th, 2011 at 12:11 am

    This does seem rather uncomfortably close to a patent on an "abstract idea" — which the Bilski patent litigation was supposed to prevent. If S.23, the patent reform bill, passes in the House in substantially the same form, It will be interesting to see whether and how the anti-business method provisions of that legislation may be asserted in the future against patents like this one. http://www.genengnews.com/gen-articles/watson-the…