Vertical Job Search Engine Developments

Joel Cheesman, at his blog Cheezhead, is keeping a close eye on some interesting developments in vertical job search.

This Blawg still has the top two hits in the google search “vertical job search,” proving again how much Google loves blogs.
Ah, but google hit no. 2 quotes Cheesman, proving again that sometimes the blogosphere is very incestuous indeed.

We previously quoted Cheesman’s definition: “Vertical search engines are specialized search engines that mine data for one narrow niche of the market place.”

So we’re talking about search tools that focus exclusively on finding jobs posted all over the Internet, obviously an incredibly useful tool for jobseekers.

Great for employers too, since a free posting on a company’s web site may be picked up by a vertical search engine and made available far more widely.

Recently, Cheesman posted on two developments involving vertical search engines:

First, he posted “net-temps dive into vertical job search,” referring to the creation of a new vertical job search engine, SearchJobs.com, that is curiously mum as to the identity of its creators and owners.

Not one to be easily fooled, Cheesman researched the question and learned that Net-Temps, a conventional job board for temporary work, is behind the site.

Second, Cheesman posted “united states patent application: 0030229638.”

This post discusses the fact that “A patent has recently been awarded to Get The Job.com via their recent acquisition of EmployOn regarding the process of aggregating job content” for purposes of a vertical job search engine. Cheesman provides a link to the entire application on file at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office.

For the less adventurous, he briefly summarizes the patent. Cheesman prefaces the post by saying he’s not a lawyer. He speculates that “if this patent represents a strong, legal case regarding the spidering of job content across the Web,” it may present serious challenges to others providing or developing vertical search capabilities.

Unlike Cheesman, I am a lawyer. However, everything I know about patent law could fit on one single-spaced page.
That said, I have a few thoughts.

My impression is that the approval of a patent is not the last word, and therefore Get The Job.com may have a long hard legal battle ahead if it intends to assert its patent rights.

Wikipedia says: “An important limitation on the ability of a patent owner to successfully assert his or her patent in civil litigation is the accused infringer’s right to challenge the validity of that patent.”

US Patent and Trademark Office says: “The subject matter sought to be patented must be sufficiently different from what has been used or described before that it may be said to be nonobvious to a person having ordinary skill in the area of technology related to the invention.”

I wonder whether the content of this patent is so nonobvious. It sounds like a smart idea, but a seems (in my nonexpert eyes) to be a fairly straightforward use of existing search technology.

It also seems that a business may have more to lose than to gain by obtaining a questionable patent, as the process results in disclosure of information that otherwise might be protected as trade secret. Is it possible to lose on the patent validity due to insufficient originality and also lose on trade secret enforcement because the information is no longer secret, being on file with the patent office?

For more on patent law basics, go to the US Patent and Trademark Office general information page, and to the Wikipedia entry for “patent.”

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