Wlauzon - 5:19 pm on May 23, 2008 (gmt 0)

Therefore, the date when a domain expires in the future can be used as a factor in predicting the legitimacy of a domain

I seriously doubt that Google would factor that in as part of SEO. They might flag short term domains for a little extra scrutiny - or maybe they just wanted to file the patent for protection and never used it.