The future of Digital Equipment Corp’s AltaVista search engine and others like it may be in question, after the US Patents and Trademarks Office awarded Lycos Inc patent no 5,748,954 for spider web index technology. The issuing of the patent fulfills the third of three predictions made by Lycos CEO Robert J Davis at the Hambrecht & Quist Technology Conference back in April (CI No 3,400). Tom Guilfoile, Lycos’ VP of finance and administration, says: From our standpoint, the worst case scenario is that it’s great news. We hold a patent that is core to what we do and to what many others do in our space. The implied threat is that Lycos rivals will be prevented from using spider technology, or will have to pay Lycos a license fee. Guilfoile won’t be drawn on details. He says the company is still planning how it will tackle enforcement, and that it has yet to contact those who may have infringed on its patent. Certain players are more egregious in their infringement than others, he says, but I prefer not to point to any particular party. Still, it’s safe to assume that executive ears are burning at Excite, Yahoo and Infoseek.
