Secrecy & patented?
Almost all patents are publically available. The exception is when related to national security. Any recent one should be available on the patent website.
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Is this just sloppy writing?
A patent may be opaquely or broadly described (IMHO), see for example application 20020123988, assigned to Google.
An example of a patent assigned to Google is 6,982,945 Baseband direct sequence spread spectrum transceiver. ???
Note that people get patents, which are often assigned to a corporation.
Google could not immediately be reached for comment but the company
> aggressively defends the secrecy of its patented search ranking system
> and asserts its right to adapt it to give customers what it determines
> to be the best results.