Recent buzz in the singapore internet is that many websites / companies are receiving letters from a company called Vuestar, demanding them to pay for a technology that Vuestar had patented.

What Vuestar patented

A method of locating web-sites using visual images.

Quoted

“those who use visual images which hyperlink to other web–pages or web-sites and in particular to contact details whether on the first page or subsequent pages of a web– site require a VUESTAR licence of “Use” in order to have the right of lawful enjoyment.”

Have you infringed the patent?

• a user submitting a search request to a server-side application via a terminal;
• the server-side application searching a database in accordance with the submitted search request; and
• identified database entries being transmitted to the terminal as a search results list, each entry containing a hyperlink to a web-page;
• whereby, each entry of the search results list contains visual content, the visual content related to the web-page for which the entry contains a hyperlink, the user able to view the visual content without being required to activate the hyperlink to obtain the visual content, and contact information for an organisation is provided as a component of an entry of the search results list.

This is really bad news for web developers. If Vuestar win, it must be freaking rich from the license cost.

It is also said that Vuestar are also sending emails to big internet titans like google, yahoo for demand of the use of license. Lets see what happens..

 If you are interested, join in the discussion at http://www.community.kan.sg/showthread.php?p=2028 :D