IP company Walker Digital has launched a wave of patent infringement lawsuits against Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Yahoo and Vibrant Media over the use of hyperlinks in digital documents. The patent in question was filed in June 2006 and granted last Tuesday, on October 18. The title: “Method and system for providing a link in an electronic file being presented to a user.”

Walker Digital claims that all five companies infringe on its patent which describes “an association between a data pattern and a computer network resource.” The patent indicates a slight modification of content when a user clicks on a link in order to provide a “customized viewpoint for the user”, which is especially important in Internet advertising products that offer user targeting.

The benefits of the idea include, according to Walker Digital, to enable “a party other than the author or administrator of content to alter or manipulate the content in a customized manner for a user, prior to or as part of delivery or display of the content to the user. The content may be customized for an individual user, a user belonging to a particular category or class, or a user who belongs to a particular organization. In one embodiment, a Web browser processes the content retrieved by a user, based on a viewpoint defined for the user, to insert at least one hyperlink into that content. Each hyperlink provides the user with a linkage, or cross-reference to a computer network resource.”

Walker’s patent does not include the actual technology required to realize his idea, but simply provides a schematic approach how such a technology could work. It is rather startling to see that those who actually create a product may be punished because someone else had the idea for it before – without building it. However, Walker Digital’s Jay Walker delivers an interesting explanation for this circumstance on his company’s website: The quote attributed to him reads, “Original thinking is the hardest work there is; it is also the most rewarding.” If he is able to collect royalties, he is most certainly right.

SOURCE via Morris James (pdf)