Yahoo! claims! it! invented! Web! 2!

SEARCH ENGINE outfit Yahoo filed a patent claiming that it invented Web 2.0.

The patent described here is for a "Dynamic Page Generator" that lets a user to customise a webpage template to displays data drawn from other sources.

The application says that the pages served are news pages, giving the user a custom selection of stock quotes, news headlines, sports scores, weather, and the like.

Oddly the examples given in the patent include Web 2.0 offerings similar to Google's Personalised Home, Pageflakes, Netvibes and even online RSS readers. Yahoo! claims that it did the legwork for Web 2.0 in the late 1990s.

If the patent is granted, lawyers could be showing up at the door of Web 2.0 companies to demand cash. µ