Google has been granted a patent to cover the modification of its logo for special events.

Patent details

I have seen reports that other companies fear it will prevent them from amending their logo for special events. e.g. adding a Red Nose for Comic Relief. More details

Do you think this is reasonable, or an abuse of patents?

I'm not sure I understand: Google is protecting the modification of it's logo so that only it gets to say how and what it's logo is used for and how modifications are made?

Seems fair to me, or have I not understood?

That seems fair to me as well. There seems to be an implication that the patent covers the process of modifying a logo for special events. This could prevent other organisations from modifying its own logo.

e.g. If EF produced a Christmas version of its logo with a link to an EF social event thread it could be in breach of Google's patent.

Prior art would probably be the get out clause for other companies modifying their logos for special occasions. This is something that I imagine has been going on practically since the logo was invented, so I would guess it wouldn't be too difficult to find some prior examples. If I remember rightly the BBC used to modify there logo for Christmas way before way before the founders of google were born.

A quick glance of the patent (I really can't be bothered to read it all) would seem to indicate it's the methods behind the alteration of the logo, more specifically the computer instructions and methodology to do this automatically. So this shouldn't affect anybody who manually redesigns a logo for an event. (disclaimer - I may well have missed the mark on this)

To be honest all of the major tech companies seem to be patenting everything and all at the moment. Basically it's "patent trolling", whereby a company files a patent for a simplistic thing. However they don't implement it, they just wait for another company to start doing something the same or similar, and then out come the lawyers.

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...allegedly.

It's American - which makes it different from just about everywhere else. All sorts of things not patentable elsewhere are patentable in the USA - computer software and business methods included. In Europe, a technical effect is required for software patentability - it must do something technical, which does not merely mean modifying the innards of a computer. Something like a computerised milling machine would be patentable in Europe, the program itself, no.

Not surprisingly, US7912915 exists only in the USA, so anyone outside the USA can copy it. But if someone else in, say, Switzerland, copied the technique, would the availability of the website in the USA constitute patent infringement? I can't answer that one, but I suspect not, unless the Swiss website was specifically targeting potential US customers. However, with US law, one never really knows.