I had a reader contend, in response to an earlier post, that the first Local.com patent “was not defensible.” Yet the issuance of the second patent today related to enhanced directory assistance got the market excited and generated a flurry of phone calls all essentially asking “how real are these patents?”
Almost nobody can believe that a relatively small company such as Local.com might now effectively control local search on the desktop and a version of local search on mobile devices. As mentioned, there are a range of other, potentially competing patents that make the entire segment murky.
The questions that arise now are:
- Will Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft “thumb their noses” at these patents? Microsoft, Google and Yahoo all own patents that touch local, mobile or both
- Will Local.com now be an immediate takeover target by one of the majors to capture the IP and related assets?
- With litigation almost certain to resolve the confusion, how will Local.com fund the effort?
The tone of many of the people with whom I had discussions today was skeptical. Yet the issuance of these patents cannot be avoided. I would imagine the legal departments of various companies are right now assigning the question of the scope and applicability of these patents to unlucky junior attorneys.
Those research memos are likely to result in hedging and probabilistic scenarios that won’t satisfy anybody. So the next moves by some of the larger companies will be calculated risks — open the bidding for Local.com, aggressively deny the validity of the IP or just wait and see what happens?
Screenwerk 