This feels like another case of "Odex" one more time...

Never in my long-lived life would I expect to see a day a company or anyone for that matter of fact to use the "technology" that enables image linkage from one site to another to be patented!

Talk about an April's Fool joke gone bad.

Vuestar, a Singapore "patent-holding" firm describes itself as the "Pioneer of visual search", and is asserting patent rights in the technology that enables websites to link to other webpages using an image rather than text.

According to Ars Technica (in other words I'm not just bullshitting about this), the firm recently has been sending invoices to companies that it believes are using its patented technology. This means that as long as you have an image that is click-able either to enlarge the image, open a new page within your site, or open a new website - you will be affected by this claim!

Imagine how huge this whole "patent claim" thingy can become! I mean, which site in this whole god-damn "cyber realm" have never linked a single photo and/or graphical image to another page before? (I'm sooo dead.)

Although not all countries are affected, we (Singapore) definite am. Along with Australia and the United States that is. Oh wait, did I miss out New Zealand?

Anyhow.

The U.S. patent, by Vuestar, titled "Method of locating web-pages by utilising visual images" was filed in 2001 and granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in 2006. While the patent claim itself appears to describe an image-based search engine technology (which sounds very similar to Google Image Search), Vuestar believes that the claim extends further.

How much further are we talking about?

Well, take a look at their FAQ section. It basically makes clear that the company views ordinary website image-linking practices as within the scope of its patent.

Uh oh...

John Biggs, TechCruch, says:

Obviously this "patent" has implications in Web 2.0 because soon those curved buttons and image reflections might cost you a visit from Vuestar's lawyers.

Sam Bayard, Citizen Media Law Project, says:

I'm no patent expert, but at least under U.S. law, this patent looks like it has serious problems in terms of "obviousness" in light of prior art in the field. Jacqui Cheng at Ars provides some helpful analysis of this point. This is an excellent candidate for some patent busting efforts or maybe just a good old-fashioned lawsuit. There are lots of interesting questions, including whether the patent claim can encompass Vuestar's assertion relating to ordinary page-to-page links (i.e., non-search-engine-y uses), and whether the patent was non-obvious in light of prior text-based search and linking technology. Go get 'em!

Hongkiat says:

I don't know about you, but to file someone a lawsuit for hyperlinking images to webpage is way insane. I just noticed Veustar's tagline on the website says 'Good ideas with vision', now that's really a good idea.

Simply Jean, says:

This potentially means that all websites (except those that do not have any images at all) and blogs will be affected. Even if your site has only small, little cute arrows that points to previous or next pages will be affected. As long as the object that you click on is not text, you will be affected. So, what does this mean for blogs - particularly in Singapore?

Advertlets, Nuffnang, and Blog2U are virtually affected. By asking all their blogger members to include an image file of their clients, they are causing all bloggers to infringe this patent. Essentially, all their blogger members and themselves may have to either pay up for the licence fee or to have their sites entirely converted to text-base.

Alvinology says:

So how? I am very sure 99% of web publishers (bloggers included) must have done image linking at one point or another. For those bloggers who serve ads from blogs ads networks like Nuffnang and Advertlets, it can't be more obvious. Jialat liow... now Vuestar will be coming after everyone.

What about you? What do you say?

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