Mark Zuckerberg wins approval of first patent he ever applied for
Mark Zuckerberg filed his first patent application in 2006. It took almost six years for that patent to be approved.
The main man of Facebook received approval of his first patent application last week after years of rejections.
The patent was filed July 25, 2006, when Zuckerberg was just 22. Titled “Dynamically generating a privacy summary,” the patent covers a method for displaying a user’s social network profile according to their privacy settings. You can see the patent here.
“One or more privacy setting selections are received from the user associated with the profile,” the patent reads. “The profile associated with the user is updated to incorporate the one or more privacy setting selections.”
Though this isn’t the first patent for which Zuckerberg has won approval -- he has a handful or so -- it was the first application he filed, and it took quite a bit of work to get approved.
ReadWriteWeb says Facebook officials and Zuckerberg had to make requests and be interviewed multiple times by patent examiners to get the approval, which it describes as “the ultimate geek vanity trophy.” The patent was repeatedly rejected for its “obviousness,” according to the website.
And though the patent may be more of a vanity than it is helpful, it took quite a bit of work on Facebook’s part to win approval. In fact, the company stepped up its efforts to receive the patent approval not long after it announced it would be going public.
Facebook did not respond to a request for comment.
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