This is interesting but IBM's Watson has already done this with medical patents which resulted in Watson finding 2.5 million unique patents which it then went on to discover the earliest patentee for each compound and uploaded its results to the U.S. National Institute of Health. As such there has been speculation of IBM moving to do this in other fields of patents as well (ie. tech sector).
IBM BAO strategic IP insight platform (SIIP): http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/gbs/bao/siip/
Would be interesting to know if it covers trademarks as well. The band I'm in needs a name and everything we come up with has been trademarked all ready, but the bands that trademarked the names are no longer together/playing/releasing albums/touring. I'd hate to have to buy a trademark, but it's starting to look like that's what we're gonna need to do.
That's a very useful tool. I doubt it will have any reasonable effects on big corps. But it will surely disrupt patent lawyers/agents scalping small businesses and startup entrepreneurs.
All patent lawyers I worked with, always say don't do any prior art search. I assume it's because they dont want to lose your cheque.
Good job Google!
Samkl