[IP] more on Precedents for Google's search patent

[Dave Farber <farber@trial.danger.net>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Peter D. Junger <junger@samsara.law.cwru.edu>
To: dave@farber.net
CC: junger@samsara.law.cwru.edu
Subject: Precedents for Google's search patent
Date: Sat, 01 Mar 2003 10:21:06 -0500


For the IP list, if you think it suitable.

"John Shoch" writes:

: Google deserves tremendous credit for building a great search site.
: But let's be clear that the basic underlying concept has been around 
for
: a long time, in the world of hard-copy journal papers.
: Those papers have references, which we can think of as links going 
out
: of each document.
: But a set of publications known as The Citation Index inverts that 
data
: base of links, to find out which papers are most frequently 
referenced
: by other research papers.

And The Citation Index, in turn, is relatively new.  The idea of such
indices was developed by the legal profession in Common Law countries,
including England and the United States, in order to keep track of the
status of reported judicial decisions (which ``precedents'' are the
textual basis for the Common Law).  In the United States the leading
example of such a citator is Shepard's Citations.  For each reported
case in various reporters, a legal citator will report on (all)
subsequent cases where the reported case has been affirmed, reversed,
overruled, followed, or criticized.  If a case is frequently followed,
it becomes known to the legal profession as a ``leading case'' and
leading cases tend in turn to be more frequently cited.

Shepard's Citations, by the way, cover not only judicial decisions but
also law review articles.

--
Peter D. Junger--Case Western Reserve University Law School--Cleveland, 
OH
 EMAIL: junger@samsara.law.cwru.edu    URL:  
http://samsara.law.cwru.edu
        NOTE: junger@pdj2-ra.f-remote.cwru.edu no longer exists
--farber

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