Lycos Patents the Spider

Andrew Leonard wrote in to tell us that Lycos has Patented the Web Spider. I'm wondering if they actually were the first to do this? For that matter, if only Lycos can have a spider, then I guess only Lycos can have a search engine. /me smells trouble. The article says Lycos plans a "vigorous defense of its rights" that is most definately going to shake things up. In any case, it seems to me that this isn't the "Save As" dialog box, but its pretty close. Update Here is the actual Patent. Apparently it isn't as broad as the article above describes.