I came across the patent US9521164 from an article about the recent YouTube advertiser drama. I initially thought it was a bad April fools joke, but unless the author has trouble reading a calendar it seems to be legitimate.
After taking a brief look at the patent in question I can't understand how it describes a new, non-obvious invention, or how it would help with anything at all.
The main method described for finding the legitimacy of a website seems to be by comparing the "line density" with known illegitimate sites. The patent states it is:
A method for determining a legitimacy of a website comprising:
retrieving website content from a website;
analyzing the website content by at least determining a line density of the website, wherein the line density of the website is determined by the relationship LD=s/l, where LD is the line density, s is the size of the website and l is the number of lines of code used to present the website, and determining a website score based at least partially on the analysis;
determining that the website is illegitimate in response to said website score exceeding a threshold;
I can't see how the "line density" (average line length in bytes) of a website would help with anything, let alone determine if a website is illegitimate.
The rest of their patent seems to show retrieving data from a website and storing it in a database, something that every programmer and their dog has done at some stage:
a first computer connected to the Internet,
a data storage element interfaced with said first computer such that said first computer is operable to query said data storage element and operable to store and edit data stored in said data storage element, wherein the data storage element is further operable to store previously analyzed website information;
a user interface operable to allow a user to interact with and control said first computer;
Am I misunderstanding the patent? Is there some way in which this is original and/or would do something useful?