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The patent, titled "Systems and methods for enticing users to access a web site [sic]," protects Google's system of changing a company logo to correspond with a special event or story line as well as its practice of associating a link or search results with said special event logo. Google co-founder Sergey Brin is credited as the inventor of the system.
Considering this is the company that created a car that can drive itself, a patent on doodles might seem a bit frivolous. But remember, this is also the company that successfully patented its nearly blank homepage design in 2009.