When designing and developing a search engine in general, what patents should I be aware of? www.uspto.gov list over 2000 patents linked to search engines and I would just hate to develop something only to find out that I am infringing on someone else’s patents!

Cheers,

I have done tons of research in this area because I am currently applying for a patent related to SEM. My recommendations is to do an advanced search and look for patents by Google, Yahoo, Overture, AltaVista and other major search engines out there. Those are the "big guns" in our industry for search engine patents.

Yea I think that is a good idea. I have done it at the USPTO before but not as extensively as I would like.

Thanks for the suggestion.