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The article manages to commit the sin of not actually informing the reader about the subject patent. It can be found at U.S. Patent Number 5,576,951.

The patent's key claim is:

1. A computer search system for retrieving information, comprising:

means for storing interrelated textual information and graphical information;

means for interrelating said textual and graphical information;

a plurality of entry path means for searching said stored interrelated textual and graphical information, said entry path means comprising:

textual search entry path means for searching said textual information and for retrieving interrelated graphical information to said searched text;

graphics entry path means for searching said graphical information and for retrieving interrelated textual information to said searched graphical information;

selecting means for providing a menu of said plurality of entry path means for selection;

automatic data processing means for executing inquiries provided by a user in order to search said textual and graphical information through said selected entry path means and for fetching data as a function of other data;

indicating means for indicating a pathway that accesses information related in one of said entry path means to information accessible in another one of said entry path means;

accessing means for providing access to said related information in said another entry path means; and

output means for receiving search results from said processing means and said related information from said accessing means and for providing said search results and received information to such user.

So basically this patent also seems to me to cover databases and management systems, such as those that come with Microsoft SQL Server. This could cover any website that uses a database backend, it seems to me. That's most of the important ones.

The patent's key claim is:

That patent was awarded in 1996. It describes nothing that the Macintosh 'Finder' could not do in 1984. Apple's Lisa did it the year before that. The Xerox Star did all that in 1981. A lot of this stuff was described by Alan Kay in his doctoral dissertation The Reactive Engine, in 1969. There were attempts to implement those ideas as well, but the ideas strained the computers of the day. The first prototype Alto workstation (precursor to the Star) was turned on at Xerox' Palo Alto Research Center in 1973. Its first screen display was a bitmapped image of the Sesame Street character Cookie Monster.