IBM Patents Web Page Templates 420
jalefkowit writes: "More follies from the US Patent & Trademark Office ... now IBM has been awarded US Patent #6,304,886 for software that automatically "generates [a] customized Web site without the Web site creator writing any HTML or other programming code", based on "a plurality of pre-stored templates, comprising HTML formatting code, text, fields, and formulas" that are then customized through the process of asking the user a few questions. In other words, they've patented the ubiquitous wizards found in FrontPage and other newbie-oriented HTML editors. This was submitted to the USPTO on June 19, 1998 -- surely someone out there knows of prior art for this?"
[yawn] Been there... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Is there a patent for the wheel? (Score:2, Informative)
Based on the (Score:5, Informative)
Having worked with content management systems in both PHP and ColdFusion using a WebBrowser and a VB client for managing the content.
The chances your specific interface emulate completely IBMs described interface are little to none.
Before I rise up to say how evil IBM is I will say this. Patents are an eventuality. It is like a nuclear arms race, if you don't patent it someone else will, and then they can use it against you or at least hold it over you.
Is this new, unique, exciting, or worth a patent? No probably not. It seems from their description to be little more than a super-duper WYSIWYAG (What you see is what you almost get) type site builder. WIth IBMs drive to do ecommerce this definitely fits with thier overall marketing and business plans.. This would obviously be for the low - medium end of the ecommerce spectrum
THe system also defines a system of content approval and rights of some sort
All in all I have designed systems this in depth or more. The systems may do similar things but the means of doing it are invariably almost completely different. (Of course my system focuses on already having a site and allowing an administrator to build the site without the overhead of really thinking up the design aspect at all.. just manage the content)
Again, this is just an incremental evolution.
Jeremy
Interning at IBM (Score:5, Informative)
We were constantly reminded that IBM was the corporate leader of patents (whoo hooo! How about getting my damned stock price up again!) and that meetings like this were common.
I found it to be pathetic.
Re:Typical IBM (Score:3, Informative)
Like most designs, it is not the idea itself that matters so much, but how you implement it.
My old company released software in '96... (Score:2, Informative)
Netscape Gold? (Score:3, Informative)
Given the length of time it takes to work a patent through the system, I'm sure we're going to have many more years of foolishness like this ahead.
RTFP, or, the claim's the thing . . . (Score:5, Informative)
Look to the patent claim, which governs the scope of the patent grant. Understand that the meaning of that claim may depend upon many other things. And be cool -- most patents are much narrower than they seem to a lay reader.
Re:Sorry IBM (Score:3, Informative)
--
Evan
Patents at Amazon.com made it sucky (Score:2, Informative)
We were told not to talk about the "one click" patent AT ALL. So people would write "I'm not talking about it", etc, on elevator whiteboards.
It was a sad joke. And oh yes.. The whiteboards went away as the layoffs came.
Prior Art: Homestead.com (Score:2, Informative)
Coincidince?
Profit Motive as Justification (Score:5, Informative)
Every time a story about a company doing something irresponsible or evil gets posted on Slashdot, somebody invariably makes this argument. "Don't blame them! They're just trying to make a profit!" Apparently the idea is that anyone who's trying to make money is exempt from any moral responsibility whatsoever. I've never heard a good explanation for why this is supposed to be true. In fact I've never heard any explanation for it; some people just assume that the profit motive is enough to justify any misdeed, as long it stops short of breaking an actual law.
Abusing the system by filing frivolous patents is wrong. Yes, there should be a law against it, but the fact that there isn't doesn't mean that the people who do it shouldn't be criticized.
TheFrood
How to earn money from finding prior art (really) (Score:2, Informative)
(It may be argued that the patent issuing process is broken beyond repair, but even if so, a viable alternative has yet to emerge.)
Disclaimer: I have no interest in the above site other than a registered user.
some info for you (Score:2, Informative)
1. IBM filed in 1998.
2. You need to understand that invention starts when the idea is conceived. If IBM *conceived* of teh idea in, say, 1994, and diligently reduced it to practice from 1994 to 1998, then, then file with the uSPTO,
This is how the process works....all you need is some documentation of when you first conceived of the idea, and some documentation of having diligently reduced it practice in teh intervening time frame between conception and filing.
Who cares? (Score:1, Informative)
At the time when IBM came up with this patent, it was probably somewhat of a novel idea. Perhaps you slashdotters do not understand how a research division works at a large company. I have worked for a research division at one of these large companies, and perhaps I can explain it to you.
A group of people in a given department doing research on topic X get together and brainstorm. Out of this brainstorming session comes lots of ideas, perhaps 50 ideas in total. Then people go off and try to find information about these 50 ideas. Usually they look for patents that have already been submitted. Idea X1 has not patent submitted, so personA files a Declaration of Invention. The reason they do this is just in case someone else is thinking of patenting this idea, then the company has a concrete peice of information that this idea has been around before. Next, the person(s) who got idea X1 rolling will talk to their boss, and get him to hook them up with a lawyer to write a formal patent proposal. Sure, in some cases they write their own, it doesn't really matter. Then they file the patent with whatever patent body governs. Then the person(s) involved with the patent sumbitting are very happy, because they just got a bonus from their large company, and their boss put a smiley face beside their name for their year end review. Many companies base raises on number of patent submissions.
Then they wait 3 or 4 years and more than likely forget about it. Out of the millions of patents that are submitted, I would be surprised if more than 500 000 of them are ever even used. For starters, lots of the patent ideas stink to begin with, and some idiot at the patent office let them through. I beleive that most patent officials have no clue, and the real checks on whether the patent is good or not comes at the organizational level of the large company when they try to decide whether they should spend the $30k or so in various fees in order to get the patent submitted.
The department I worked at at a large company had about 20 employees, and each employee probably averaged about 5-15 patent submissions a year. I recall one employee getting a patent filed, and she couldn't even remember what the patent was about. When everyone looked at what the patent was for, everyone laughed at how dumb of an idea it was. I bet IBM is doing the same right now, laughing over coffee at how funny it is that this idea became an actual patent.
Because the patent process is sooooo slow, it makes the majority of patent submissions useless. A good patent submission is when you find an idea so unique that in 3 years, there will still be very few people that would even consider it, let alone file a patent for it. And it has to give such substantial gains over whatever is currently used that everyone will want to jump on the bandwagon and use it. Or the other option is to get your patents into standards, because then people are forced to use it. This in fact happens quite a bit, and usually the large companies build products to follow these standards, so Company A trades 5 patents to Company B for their 3 better patents, every one is even steven, and they go along their merry way.
Anyway, there yah have it.
Student Software (Score:3, Informative)
Our client wanted to be able to post reports that were output from the software to the web. Our head programmer put a very rudimentary web template system in place that would output reports with choices of sort order, gawd-aweful background colors (from a 16 color palett), and customized headings and footers. This was all done without the user having to know any HTML. You can see samples here [bsu.edu] dating back to 1997.
The About SCORE [bsu.edu] page even references automated HTML authorship. From the page:
SCORE (Scheduling Classes with Order Reliability and Efficiency) is an application developed by a group of Computer Science students enrolled in the Software Engineering sequence at Ball State University. SCORE is an application that is a flexible scheduling advisor for use by faculty involved in the creation of course offerings by a department. SCORE has features which allow for powerful schedule reporting, class conflict catching and reporting, persistent and consistent data retieval and automated HTML authorship of documents for Internet/Intranet display.
Though ugly, I think these qualify as prior art and beat IBM's 1998 application.
Defensive patents? (Score:2, Informative)
During the IBM/Microsoft divorce, IBM was supposidly able to drop a big, thick pile of patents on the table to prevent Microsoft from really shafting them.
Didn't IBM have a software patent way back on using the TAB key to move between fields in software? They never charged anyone for that one.
Re:What can be done? (Score:4, Informative)
Here's what it's going to take (Pick 2).
1. Corporate backing (i.e. money. Find a company recently badly burned by patents to back up legislature)
2. Sacking people at the patent office. For what it's worth, the patent office is more of a product registration entity than an idealistic "never-seen-that-before" museum of greats. Hell, even I have a patent!
3. Changing the whole business of patents. Puttng hundreds of lawyers out of business.
4. Changing the view of product development and competition.
You see, sometime in the past, the patent office got spanked for the light bulb and the computer, and the transistor, others too. Whenever the patent office stuck by its guns, seems that they always got in trouble. Then in the 50s or 60s the people decided that the patent office was holding back innovation.. that they needed to move faster. So they gave them minimum patent creations. The effect was to expand the patent office to not only store the great ideas of the world, but to become a registry of products and service methods.
Lots of companies were looking to build new products based on old designs, but figured that they couldn't protect the product for a long enought time to make money off it.
The goverment saw a chance to fill in this practice with "lowering the bar" so to say for patents.
Whether you think this is bad or good depends mostly on which end of the stick you're on.
Getting a patent isn't that hard.. honestly. It just takes money, good lawyers, and a long time.
Getting a GREAT patent is. Because chances are that there are atleast one other patent that resemble yours at least in context.
Here's the stickler.. if you improve the patent office then open source will suffer... Why? Because companies will start enforcing their patents.
I can't imagine how much of the linux kernel/os/gtk/qt has patents associated already. I remember reading security patents in 89 from apple and sun that are SURELY broken by openssh. I'm sure there's alot of patents on GUI's, on cacheing, on scheduling, on file formats. But it's BECAUSE of lackluster patents that companies don't go after linux. Why? Because they're afraid of that other company that might have a simular patent going after them.
So the only way to really do it is to kill software patents, right? No.. then you'll see companies and universities going the "trade secret" route. Free Code could disappear like turkey on thanksgiving.
I think the real answer lies in improving the quality of patents. Raising the bar a bit, but not being too idealistic. To do this, the patent office should HIRE PEOPLE WITH A REAL SOFTWARE BACKGROUND. Most of them, I hear, are lawyers. (That's who they deal with, right?)
In other words, get the industry to pay for a comprehensive database like biomedical does. Allow people to "publish" in a journal to document prior art. This, and a good combination of standards committees will keep the playing field level, IMHO.
Anyhow, IBM has every right to get a patent on this.. you would too. Spending a few million bucks on development, only to get dragged into court later is NO FUN. Better to patent some basic novel method.
There's lots of patent holding companies who get their jollies off calling IBM and telling them their infringing on their patent.
Pan
Re:Sorry IBM (Score:3, Informative)
IBM should really be a little more carefull about crap like this; it obviously alienates the open-source community that they are trying to be on good terms with.
The patent office is not designed to make money (Score:3, Informative)
"Congress shall have power
Federal patent laws have existed since 1790. The first United States Patent Act, that of 1790 was a short act of seven sections only entitled "An act to promote the Progress of Useful Arts". Under its terms any two of the Secretary of State, the Secretary of War and the Attorney General were empowered to grant patents for terms of up to fourteen years for inventions that were "sufficiently useful and important" provided that the grantee submitted a specification describing the invention (and where appropriate a model thereof) to the Secretary of State at the time of the grant.
In 1793 this act was repealed and replaced by a slightly longer act, the drafting of which is largely attributed to Thomas Jefferson, who was at the time Secretary of State and therefore intimately involved in the administration of the 1790 Act. The Act is notable for its definition of what constitute patentable subject matter in the United States, which definition is almost unchanged up to now:
"any new and useful art, machine, manufacture or composition of matter and any new and useful improvement on any art, machine, manufacture or composition of matter."
In the same year the Supreme Court in Grant v. Raymond made it clear that failure to provide an adequate description of the invention was a ground under which a defendant might use when sued for patent infringement, it being held that
"as a preliminary to a patent a correct specification and description of the thing discovered (was required). This is necessary in order to give the public, after the privilege shall expire, the advantage for which the privilege is allowed and is the foundation of the power to issue the patent
A major review of the law was undertaken in 1836 in response to complaints about the grant of patents for things that lacked novelty. Under this revision the Patent Office was set up as part of the State Department and a specification had to be submitted to it and be examined for novelty before a patent would be granted. As a consequence of this provision of the 1793 Act requiring the inventor to distinguish his invention from the prior art was expanded upon to require the applicant to "particular specify and point out the part, improvement or combination, which he claims as his own invention or discovery".
Nowhere in there do I see anything about being designed to make money.
What I do see is that the Patent Office was set up to ENSURE sufficient novelty in those items submitted for patenting. If it fails in this IT IS FAILING IN THE ONE THING IT WAS DESIGNED TO DO!
Re:Sorry IBM (Score:3, Informative)
Sigh.
Why can't /. read patent claims? This patent [uspto.gov] (somewhat cleaner presentation of the text than the top link) has a whole bunch of claims, and it actually has a detailed descriptive listing as to what the program's supposed to do.
I reproduce the list here.
IOW, it's more than just single-page templates. This system is multi-user, it supports a web page approval structure, and it supports web SITE templates.
That is, the templates will generate a whole bunch of pages.