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Message: <blockquote data-quote="gamerprinter" data-source="post: 6315990" data-attributes="member: 50895">Not that I'm disagreeing with you, but I know someone who wanted to build a "Find a Vendor" website where you input your zip code and get a list of results based on specified distances from your zip code to a given vendor, and he applied for a patent using that mechanism in 2008 - even though many online services use zip codes to find sources within a given distance from that zip code and had been using it for years and years (long before 2008). He got is patent approved. The worst part is that he didn't even finish building the site that this patented mechanism was supposed to be used. Instead, he and his lawyers are searching for commercial websites that use zip code searches and suing them - he has sued over 20 companies so far. (This isn't a friend of mine, rather a friend of mine's dad).So just because a given mechanism or process has not been previously patented and actually in use by many companies for many years, does not mean the patent office won't grant the patent to someone asking and paying for it - they very well might.</blockquote>