Today the United States Patent and Trademark Office issued a patent to Google for its Google Doodles feature, wherein the company’s home page logo is customized on certain holidays or days to commemorate a certain person, place, or thing.
Problem is, this is not Sergey Brin’s or Google’s invention. It is PLATO’s. (And who knows, there might have been prior art even before the early to mid 1970s when the practice was commonplace on PLATO’s "welcome page.")
via PLATO History – Yet another PLATO innovation ignored, this time patented by Google. Even Google submits stupid and ridiculous patents, for stuff already “invented”.