There's very good discussion here: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100315/0058408555.shtml - one of the comments: > "Jim Vitek says on his LinkedIn profile that he is one of the named > inventors. Yet there's nothing on the PTO search site - I'm a patent > practitioner, and I looked. Assuming a provisional was filed in > January 2008, and an application filed in January 2009, then under the > 18-month rule, this application should be published in a few months, > after which we'll be able to see what exactly was claimed." you might need to search for the USPTO Patent # so you can know the updates on this. UPDATE: Found it: http://www.google.com/patents/WO2001054478A2 and http://www.google.com/patents/US20030065565 you can ask for an update via: https://patents.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/WO2001054478A2 and https://patents.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/US20030065565 UPDATE 2: For [US20030065565][1] the US Public Pair lists the application as abandoned as of 09-17-2007. [1]: https://patents.google.com/patent/US20030065565