Marcia - 9:03 pm on Jan 12, 2008 (gmt 0)

My guess is that the application of a technology or concept for a certain process or business use is what's being considered patentable. Using reading text in images for search isn't the same as the scanner reading the bar code at the super market to ring up the product on the register and adjust the store's inventory.

There have been a ton of patents granted with regard to link analysis (or text recognition or semantic analysis) in search, but while they're all analyzing for the same purpose, the process and data being used, and the particular way they're being applied, are different.

There was a thread here at WebmasterWorld way back in 2001 about Alta Vista having just about everything for search patented, but that didn't stop any further patents from being issued to other companies.