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1994 IBM Manual Describes 2005 Google Patent

theodp writes “The USPTO kicked off 2005 by awarding Google a new patent for highlighting the search term in a retrieved document by changing at least one of a color, font, style, effect, and size. But more than a decade earlier, a 1994 IBM BookManager Library Reader User’s Guide described the concept of search emphasis, the use of color or intensity to make search matches stand out from the rest of the text in a softcopy document. As such, wouldn’t it be a nice gesture if Google - who boasts they can make money without doing evil - put the patent into the Public Domain? “

from techdirt