• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, August 1, 2005

Google apparently wants to obtain patent protection for the idea of serving contextual ads in RSS feeds, according to documents made public late last week.

Google employee Nelson Minar, on Dec. 31, 2003, filed an application for a patent for embedding ads in syndicated content. The application was made public last Thursday (The U.S. Patent and Trade Office publishes applications 18 months after they're filed, unless the applicant has requested they remain confidential.)

Google declined to comment.

The application describes the idea sought to be patented as: "A method of generating information including targeted ads, the method comprising: receiving information in a syndicated format; receiving a first targeted ad from an automated ad server system; combining the first targeted ad with the received information to generate a set of response information which is also in a syndicated format."

Google and other companies, including Pheedo and Kanoodle, recently began experimenting with ads in RSS, but for now, the market remains small.

In the short time since the application was made public, it has generated a wave of controversy, with some commentators saying that the idea of ads in RSS is neither original nor non-obvious--two requirements for patents.

Google was previously involved in a patent battle with Yahoo!'s Overture about whether Google's keyword bidding system infringed on an Overture patent. Google settled the case last August, immediately before its initial public offering by Google, issuing Yahoo! 2.7 million Class A shares.

In the past, the Patent Office has been accused of issuing business method patents too quickly, without investigating whether the idea was patent-worthy. The most famous example was the patent for one-click Web ordering, which was awarded to Amazon.com, but later became the subject of protracted litigation between Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com. The case eventually settled, after an appeals court sided against Amazon.com.