Nancy Cochran wrote (under a variant of this subject line):
|Also there are records in the U.S.Patent office itself, including my
|patent of 1986 (# 5,206,949) that disclosed what can only be seen as
|facets. (The name wasn't around then but in the patent's example we
|divided hotels along dimensions such as size, activities on site,
|proximity to airports and businesses, etc.) There is also a U.S.
|Patent filed about 3 months before mine that does the same thing.
|I'd need to look for the author and number if it is of interest.
|
|The patent history of any technology is useful in the public sector.
|The record that is created by the patent office often works to the
|advantage of the public domain.
"Way back", in the mid to late 1990's, I remember the Magellan/Northern
Light search engine had its "Custom Search Folders", which was a
quasi-faceted (or facet-like or clustered)approach to presenting
results. I remember the feature being quite the rage when it first
appeared. But, of course, those were the days when every couple of
months a new search engine (Lycos, HotBot, Inktomi, FAST, etc.), search
technique, or search results presentation seemed to be invented and
appeared on the scene. When the 800-pound gorilla Google came, it sort
of wiped everybody else off the map (even though they still exist).
Google fit the American ideal of "bigger is better" (rather than "better
is better")--the old quantity-over-quality debate.
Anyway, for those who might be interested, in searching for the Northern
Light patent I came across this "Internet Search Engine Patents" page:
<http://www.cptech.org/ip/business/software/searchengine.html>. Enjoy!
Harvey
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Received on Fri Feb 02 2007 - 19:03:13 EST