Image Thumbnails in Your Search Results? Pay VueStar a License Fee.

Implications: VueStar, a Singapore firm, is requesting license fees from a large number of companies, claiming they have a patent on image search.  They have patents, but they are narrower and relate to how results are displayed.  Companies often panic at infringement claims, and send off a check "just in case," so a little sober analysis is in order.

Analysis: VueStar's U.S. patent covers visual results displays.  If your search shows something visual, not just the URL and a little text from the site, then you could be infringing.  The U.S. patent, 7,065,520, claims priority to 2000, and was indeed filed under the (international) Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT). But the only case in which you ought to worry about it is if your search results display any of these: "a hyperlink, image, video, animation, mini-image of a web page, streaming video, logo [...or] trademark".  The VueStar web site suggests that any site with a hyperlinked image has to pay up, and that does not appear to be true at all.