DISCLAIMER: ” This is one of my many ‘gut feelings’. I have no proof that this actually happens and have no intention of looking for said proof. Other than that, I think that it can, and probably is, done. If you take any action based on what I write and lose your life-savings in court fees I will not accept to be blamed for your stupidity.”
Now let’s go……
The inventor sat down at his desk, 3D sketchpad loaded, notepad loaded, pencil and paper at hand for those marks that you can’t just quickly annotate to your digital text. “Wait!”, he said. “What if I’m just re-inventing the wheel and somebody has already thought of and patented my idea?”. “Shall I troll through the patent site looking for something that might be similar to my invention?”. “Why not?”. “How do I find or not find what I want?”. “AHA! Use the in-built search facility.” “BAAAAADDD idea”. “Hmmm…..maybe somebody in another country has thought of it. I’ll use a public search engine for a world-wide search”. “EVEN WORSE IDEA”.
I’ll tell you why.
Everyday millions of people run billions of queries in search engines. Most of them are looking for something that is already there. In most cases they find what they are looking for. In some cases the search engine spews out a “0 results found for your query” or something similar. If you search for (for example) “car accident” you will probably get a few thousands or millions of search results. When was it that car accidents did not make online news? Look for U2, porn, OSS or FOSS, Linux, speakers, audio etc. You’ll find it all there.
But what if you are looking for something that you hope is not there? So you have just come up with an idea for a new sex toy but do not want to go through all the hassle of sketching and documenting the design before you are sure that your “Vibrating ball tingling orgasm inducer” has not already been invented. So what do you do. You search for it on the internet, in one of the gazillion public search engines, or built into private websites. You go to http://www.myfavouritesearchenginealwaysfindsit.com and start typing in your query.
“Vibrating” (2 million results). “Vibrating testicle” (1 million results). “Vibrating testicle tingler” (1024 results). “Vibrating testicle tingler orgasm” (50 results). “Vibrating testicle tingler orgasm inducer” (0 results).
“YAY! Nobody’s yet thought of my ‘Vibrating testicle tingler orgasm inducer’. I can safely work on my design and apply for a patent. I’m gonna be rich!!!” Yeah.
One very nice thing about search engines is that they index all the information they gather so that quick search results can be provided.
But what is an index? For those non tech-savvy folks out there, an index is like a catalogue of keywords (like what you type in your favourite search engine) that is saved as part of a database to match queries faster than actually looking through each record in said database. Once some of your keywords match something in an index, the search engine gives you a list of URIs that it thinks could contain the data you are looking for on the ‘net. OOhhh cool! Yep!!
Now what happens when your search does not match anything in your list of keywords? The search engine gives up and gives you the famous ’0 results found’. OK, but where does this lead to?
To build a better index so that searches are ever so faster and accurate, search engines keep a copy of all keywords that people type in so that if something that was not so popular yesterday becomes popular today the index is rebuilt so that people looking for what has become popular today can be found faster. Now notice what I wrote in the sentence before this one. Quote: “search engines KEEP A COPY OF ALL KEYWORDS”. And where do these search engines keep this copy? In a database table, of course.
So, if you regularly type in ‘free porn’ in your favourite goobing or bingle search engine these words are saved and used to build a better index of free porn for you so that you can get your fix faster. All this data is saved in what is called a table. A table is a ‘container’ (think of it like a folder or directory in your computer) in a database. Some of these ‘tables’ are temporary and get deleted immediately after the data in them is no longer required but a lot of these tables are PERMANENT and grow and grow when the database engine (or program) writes new keywords and combinations of keywords to them. These are the keywords that you are typing in your search engine. So now we have established that all the searches that you do on a search engine are PERMANENTLY STORED. “So what?”, you say. “Goobing and Bingle don’t know my name and where I live so my wife will never know what I was searching for if I delete my search history in my browser.” Correct, BUT……
This brings us to today’s subject. If you are an inventor and are searching on the net to see if your idea has already been thought of and patented, your searches are being saved too, like everybody else’s. If you narrow your search and it gives you 0 results this is ESPECIALLY even MORE SIGNIFICANT than searches that give thousands or millions of results. Searches that give no result can be/are saved in separate tables so that the search engine provider can look through these queries and ‘innnocently’ find out why his search engine gave 0 results. In this way he can build a better index and the next time, you will find what you are looking for, EXCEPT THAT THIS IS EXACTLY HOW YOU HAVE JUST GIVEN AWAY YOUR PRECIOUS INNOVATIVE INVENTION that was going to make you rich. Maybe the search engine produced 0 results because nobody has thought of your idea yet BUT NOW YOUR IDEA IS PERMANENTLY RECORDED in the search engine database through the keywords that you used in your search.
Since queries in search engines usually produce results more than not, such queries are lost among the billions of other queries done everyday but YOUR particular query that gave 0 results is saved in a separate container that is regularly visited by the search engine provider for optimising their search engine indexes. Now, your search engine provider has learned that the “Vibrating testicle tingler orgasm inducer” has not yet been invented and promptly applies for a patent himself before you have even started your 3D sketch or have written one word in your digital or paper notepad. HA!
This was lesson number x to the nth of how using the internet can be bad for you. So how do you find if your idea is patented or not without using the ‘net? I DON’T KNOW. Maybe you can physically go to your country’s patent office and physically search through the millions of patent files in the office. I wouldn’t use the office computer to search through the patent office’s internal database though coz that is just another search engine and you never know who can be sifting through your queries even as you are typing them in!!
Sorry if I just ruined your financial invention-based future and made you paranoid but you must be aware that search engines CAN DO EVIL too.
Peace,
Relliker
Good points!