Crawlability Inc. Files Patent for SEO Technology

Originally Posted by T2DMan

I totally understand why vBSEO/Crawlability is wanting to take out a software patent. I know that this has been signalled for some time.

However, there is also a big ground-swell against software patents, and a Google for the phrase brings up lots of sites - Software Patent Dangers.

As much as I am enjoying the success of vBSEO, I do not like the idea that a concept of using an external program to rewrite script (or however it is being termed), can be a patented idea that others are stopped from using without paying a royalty to crawlability.

I would be very interested in seeing discussion from vBSEO about this. I will be interested in seeing the actual patent application once it becomes public.

I would imagine what they have patented is their method... not the general re-writing.

The ford model T was patented. But there were a million different models made since. "cars" were not patented, but rather the method that produced a particular car, from the engine, body, etc was.

I think thats what's going on here..

Good works folks!!! I'm very curios about the cms you choose...

congrats

Letting Google/MSN/Yahoo into your Kimono, even a little, is not good.

Shooting a signal flare to let the engines know (any more) detail about you is no good.

My vote:

Fly underneath the radar, don't strip any part of your stealthness off the plane!

Troy

got proof?

Great news guys... best of luck & advance congratulations

Originally Posted by COBRAws

What will happen to other vBulletin SEO open source software developments?

My thoughts exactly.

I'm glad I live in Europe and that software cannot be patented legally here.

There must also be enough prior art to render a lot of this invalid? Surely the old deep hack of vbulletin and mod_rewrite for v2 which removed basic duplication of URLs would be applicable here?

I'd like to see the application and detail, I'm definately not a fan of this at all and if need be will help to search for prior art on this if any of the older vB hacks invalidate it or this can be considered obvious.

A big thumbs down from me I'm afraid.

Originally Posted by buro9

My thoughts exactly.

I'm glad I live in Europe and that software cannot be patented legally here.

There must also be enough prior art to render a lot of this invalid? Surely the old deep hack of vbulletin and mod_rewrite for v2 which removed basic duplication of URLs would be applicable here?

I'd like to see the application and detail, I'm definately not a fan of this at all and if need be will help to search for prior art on this if any of the older vB hacks invalidate it or this can be considered obvious.

A big thumbs down from me I'm afraid.

Same here. I mean, what was patented? There are quite a lot of SEO products out there, but not such good as vbseo. vbrewrite from vbulletin.org comunity is close to vbseo but still, far beyond.

I hope crawlability responds to my message instead of ignoring my PM's sent though this website.

Oh, btw, with this "patent" we can say goodye to the "in the near future" branding free option.

Thank you.

this is my first post and it won't be positive at all:

Originally Posted by T2DMan

However, there is also a big ground-swell against software patents, and a Google for the phrase brings up lots of sites - Software Patent Dangers.

As much as I am enjoying the success of vBSEO, I do not like the idea that a concept of using an external program to rewrite script (or however it is being termed), can be a patented idea that others are stopped from using without paying a royalty to crawlability.

I would be very interested in seeing discussion from vBSEO about this. I will be interested in seeing the actual patent application once it becomes public.

FULL ACK on that!

Crawlability show us what you 'invented' ASAP. I'm very positive that we'll be able to prove prior art if it's any kind of essential technique used for optimizing forums to work with google's algos. Your press release was just marketing b******* - show us some proof. I'm not too much into it, but I wasn't able to find any patent of yours via the USPTO search engine so I ask you for a hint on what you want to patent.

Thank-you all for your support.

For those of you who are curious, the patent is not for the vBSEO software in its entirety. That is protected by copyright.

The patent covers an SEO methodology. Unfortunately, at this time, we cannot disclose the contents of the application.

Big supporter of VBSEO -- just adding my 2cents regarding patents.

I believe in order to patent it you are going to have to disclose enough to let everyone else know how you do it (though I think that is fairly obvious). Patents aren't a good thing sometimes (and I'm not talking about for the market -- I'm talking for the company getting the patent). Unlike copyrights, you have to pretty much disclose everything and getting a patent is no guarantee it will hold up. Good luck guys.

-vissa