GOOGLE FILES PATENT ON A PAY MODEL FOR SEARCHING CONTENT: This article summarizes the analysis from Susan Kuchinskas at InternetNews on a patent filing by Larry Page (co-founder of Google). The patent application , 20040122811, titled "Method for searching media" was originally filed in September 2003 and its core function is summarised by Susan,

to enable search of printed material, offer pay-per-view documents, scanned documents with clickable ads and even the ability for print publishers to swap out ads in digital copies of their printed pages. There are two key elements of the patent: a method for executing a permission protocol so that the publisher could authorize Google to display more text from the relevant publication; and storing scanned versions of printed documents along with data sets representing the ads that went with them.

It's not just online text that is covered. CDs, DVDs, audio books, hard copy magazines, newspapers and journals could all be included. Susan continues with the analysis:

The patent claims a method for updating advertisement information for the printed documents. For example, it would allow the publisher of a hot news story to resell the ad space to a rotating series of advertisers or let advertisers keep the ad but update prices and product information. One of the claims, covers storing information about products in the ads. This might allow the advertiser to create a special landing page associated with the ad, working like a Web banner ad.

Pretty interesting stuff indeed.