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The patent is owned by Stanford. From Wikipedia: The name "PageRank" is a trademark of Google, and the PageRank process has been patented (U.S. Patent 6,285,99
by chaz 15y ago
The patent is owned by Stanford. From Wikipedia:
The name "PageRank" is a trademark of Google, and the PageRank process has been patented (U.S. Patent 6,285,999). However, the patent is assigned to Stanford University and not to Google. Google has exclusive license rights on the patent from Stanford University. The university received 1.8 million shares of Google in exchange for use of the patent; the shares were sold in 2005 for $336 million.
- rtrunck 15y agoBeing an exclusive licensee provides significant rights to Google, for example, they could sue for infringement of that patent.
- kelnos 15y agoI'm not sure that they can. I don't believe patent law provides for anyone by the patent holder to sue for infringement. Could be wrong, though, but I seem to recall a similar story in the news not too long ago.
- yardie 15y agoI believe they can. Stanford is still the patent holder and is charged with enforcing their patent but they could put it into the exclusive contract with Google that Google is the enforcer under contract by Stanford. Of course when Google's attorneys send out C&Ds they will need to mention the stanford-Google relationship and not misrepresent that they are the patent holder.