Is this the patent for the algorithm in question?

http://www.google.com/patents/US20090043584

Certainly looks like it, or at least closely related. Can someone who is not served a localized copy of Google see if it is in fact a patent? (I see "status: application", loosely translated, but that's not something I can check the juridical meaning of.)

If you are able to view this, it is a "United States Patent Application Publication" that is found by following the `view pdf` button on the above link:

https://drive.google.com/viewerng/viewer?url=patentimages.st...

Searching on the USPTO website returns no related patents:

http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.html

The indication, to me, is that the patent has not made it past the application process.

USPTO's PAIR website indicates that the application was rejected for non-patentability. I'd link it but PAIR doesn't do permanent links. Go to the main page at [1] and type in the application or publication number.

[1] http://portal.uspto.gov/pair/PublicPair

Hardly. Alice v CLS only throws out claims based on "performed on a general purpose computer". Mostly, that is enough to refute the remainder of the claims, as they apply to generic mathematical algorithms.

Systems such as this, however, have enjoyed patent protection in the past (Soundex, notably), and his own metaphone and double metaphone systems are cited in several other patents. Google patent search is your friend here.

Snarky comment: The USPTO has a habit of not denying any applications.

Are you talking about iand's comment [0]? How does it indicate that?

[0] : https://github.com/threedaymonk/text/issues/21#issuecomment-...