Application for the Patent of Google’s Homepage Design Approved
On September 1, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) approved Google’s patent application for its sparse homepage.
In users’ view, Google’s homepage may be sparse, but Google believes it is a creative graphical user interface that is unique. At the beginning of 2004, Google applied to the USPTO for a patent on its homepage design and its search engine results page design. The latter request was granted at the end of 2006. On September 1, Google’s homepage design was granted a patent on the grounds of its graphical user interface.
Google’s homepage being granted a design patent means that Google is the legal holder of what has been deemed a unique concept. The unique concept has been defined as there being in the center of the webpage a huge search box with two big buttons on one side and some links surrounding the search box. Companies on the rise will be less likely to use an analogous design.
It should be noted that legal protection of intellectual property rights (IPR) is limited to the country that granted the IPR. Each country should protect its IPR according to its own country’s laws. A person is entitled to a piece of IPR in his own country, but this is not an adequate basis for possessing IPR in other countries. So patents are only recognized in countries that have approved them and thus Chinese websites may not be influenced by the Google’s homepage design.