14 DAY TRIAL // All major players in the search engine market may soon be forced to pay royalties to Israeli company Netex Corporation after it managed to secure a patent in the US for a technology used by Google, Yahoo and Microsoft in their search engines. The company now plans to enter the US market and its 28-year-old CEO Aviv Refuah is cautious but optimistic about the potential revenue that could be generated by enforcing the patent.
"Our plans for the company are huge," Refuah told Ynetnews. "We are entering the American market and we will try to make the most of our patent, but it's still too soon to discuss it."
The technology for which the patent was granted is common place among all search engines. Called 'www.addressing' by Netex, it allows users to get to the site they are looking for without having to go through the results page of a search engine. By typing the name of a site directly in a browser's address bar or in a search box, the users would get redirected straight to the site in question. Apparently, various search engines, including the big three, have been using the actual technology developed by Netex to power features such as Google's “I'm feeling lucky,” claims the CEO himself.
The patent application was filed in 1998 but has been finally granted only very recently and the company is still in talks with experts on patent, intellectual property and technology law in the US to see what its next steps should be. It hasn't provided figures for expected earnings but already shares of the company have skyrocketed, rising 144 percent and putting the publicly traded company's value at $30 million.
"Right now it would be premature of me to talk about the profits from the patent. [...] We've been waiting for this patent for 10 years and the goal was to get in the US," Refuah said. "Now that we've received the approval I have a good feeling, but there is a lot more to do in order to actualize the potential."