Microsoft Wants To Own Relerank

A trademark filing by an attorney on behalf of Microsoft for ownership of the term "relerank," a combination of relevancy and rank. An opening salvo in entry by blogger Thomas Hawk. In the trademark filing dated February 15th, Microsoft has plunked down $325 for a single international class as noted in the filing: International Class 009: computer software for organizing, displaying and managing search results from computer search engine software Hawk speculated in his post it could have something to do with erstwhile Microsoft acquisition target Claria, which owns a search product called RelevancyRank. That product is described as one that "evaluates what searchers do once they see the links displayed." If the technology were that impressive, Microsoft would have proceeded with its purchase of Claria last year, and disregarded criticism of the deal with the company once best known for its Gator adware history. The filing sounds more like Microsoft indulging in some parallel development. Perhaps they have quietly licensed RelevancyRank and asked Claria to suppress it until this summer. That doesn't seem to fit Microsoft's normal modus operandi of either building it or buying it. Let's speculate a bit further. IBM's here.") Drag this to your Bookmarks. Add to document.write("Del.icio.us") | Yahoo! My Web David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.