Lycos Inc has got itself yet another patent, this time though the acquisition earlier in the summer of web directory-building company WiseWire Inc. The patent has been awarded to Lycos as WiseWire’s new owner. WiseWire finds and organizes content into hierarchical directories based on a user’s requests and uses a bubble sort mechanism that pushes the sites up and down in the directory. Lycos says it has only just got the patent and it says it has not had a chance yet to assess whether rivals in the industry could be violating its patent rights. Lycos also has patents for its spider web index technology, which is far more likely to be the subject of any patent infringement case.
