The first patent Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg submitted to the US Patent Trademark and Office six years ago was finally approved on Tuesday. He submitted the patent in July 2006.
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The patent, called Dynamically generating a privacy summary is described in the abstract:
A system and method for dynamically generating a privacy summary is provided. The present invention provides a system and method for dynamically generating a privacy summary. A profile for a user is generated. One or more privacy setting selections are received from the user associated with the profile. The profile associated with the user is updated to incorporate the one or more privacy setting selections. A privacy summary is then generated for the profile based on the one or more privacy setting selections.
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Basically, the patent protects the way a user's information appears onscreen, including how they view their privacy settings. Initially, the patent was rejected for being "obvious," but was later revisited and now approved.
Since Zuckerberg filed this first patent, a handful of other patents that the billionaire submitted have been approved. At this point, the patent doesn't really mean much, according ReadWriteWeb. However, an IPO expert mentioned in the site's story says Facebook needs as many patents as it can get, especially given its recent legal battle with Yahoo.
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, stuartbur
This story originally published on Mashable here.
