a day ago
- The inventor was surprised to find they had been granted a patent in 2003 without notification.
- The patent, called Revenue Loop, sorts search results by bid multiplied by transactions, not just bid or textual relevance.
- This approach automatically detects shopping searches and maximizes search engine revenue.
- In 1998, Yahoo was not interested because advertisers were overpaying; optimizing the approach would have reduced Yahoo's revenue.
- The patent application was filed while the inventor worked at Viaweb, which was later bought by Yahoo.
- The lawyer's revisions to the patent application made the prose less clear, including a spelling error that was not a typo.