Publishing On Internet Patented

nchip writes: "Emedicene has been granted patent for "Group Publising System," announced on Infotoday. Quotes from the article: 'The software is unique -- it is the only enterprise software that allows all production to take place on the Internet.' ... '"Our system is a complete authoring, editing, and version-control system with complete management-tracking tools and a built-in communications network."' That Sounds a lot like Zope or wikiwikiweb." Or to pick something even more (ahem) prior, say CVS!

IBM may have a few words to say about this.

Most of the items in the claim have been done by Notes for a decade now, and the newer Internet related items have been around for some years. In fact the whole GPS thing sounds like a pretty easy Notes project.

For example, the hard copy Notes manuals were just printouts of Notes databases that were group authored, versioned, with role based security (editor/author/reader/reviewer), integrated e-mail with build in address book,enabled over lan/wan/internet, accessible through URLS for documents, and hierarchical sections, blah blah blah.

CVS?

When did CVS allow authoring and editing? Sure, it does version control... But it's a far cry from what they're talking about.

What they're talking about sounds a lot like content management which is certainly NOT new - and is also not what Zope does.

Just another dumb patent.

Nobody challenged this?

Was there nobody to challenge this patent when it was filed? I mean, I know that the Amazon patents are hard to swallow, but this is downright ridiculous. How did this get through the patent office unnoticed?

I think this brings to light one of the primary problems with patenting software processes. There is no one around to present prior work even when it is right underneath our noses. Perhaps we should consider establishing some kind of watchdog organization that keeps tabs on the patent office and is ready to present evidence of prior work when it becomes necessary.

If we watch these things more closely, maybe some of these ludicrous patents won't get this far.

Re:CVS?

Actually, Zope does do this. Zope has set up means for groupware applications: it's use of things like versions and transactional use of an object database to allow authoring and content management by multiple folks. Zope has:

• Versioning (albeit somewhat crude builtin, but it can extended with ZClasses that keep prior instances of objects)
• Authoring and Editing - builtin is a tightly configurable groupware system that alows the setup of users and roles for different aspects of content management. All things published in Zope have managment interfaces that allow for editing - ALL THINGS - THAT IS AUTHORING!
• Zope is a content managment system, without any added sugar or third party code, thanks to its managment interface

This is why Zope is a content management system that demonstates prior art that would invalidate this patent . If you are going to make a claim, at least be able to back it up with explainations as to why it is (some data to back up your argument, and a warrant to explain why your data backs your claim)... Hell... Slashdot is a content management system of sorts (though it doesn't meet all the criteria)...

This appears to be the patent in question:

US06088702: http://www.patents.ibm.com/de tai ls?pn=US06088702__ [ibm.com]

Even more amusing, IMHO, is a patent it lists in its references:

Browser having automatic URL generation [ibm.com]

Re:CVS?

Roxen Platform [roxen.com] handles workflow too (and cvs and xml and all the rest...

greetings, eMBee
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Doesn't matter. It's still prior art.

Prior art is just that. Whether or not it's done in-house or not is irrelavent to the issue of whether or not someone came up with it before they did. Prior art does not imply public or private use- it only implies that was implemented in some manner at one point in time. Patents are concerned with who came up with the idea first. If someone came up with it first and can prove it, it invalidates the whole thing. That's why I snail-mail myself any invention ideas that I come up with nowadays and never open the envelope- because it proves when I came up with the idea and provides proof of prior art.

I'll submit prior art!

The company I currently work for has been doing this almost EXACT thing for over 15 years. We're a medical publication company that uses SGML to format our books. Authors login from all over the world to our mainframe and use a variety of console-based and web-based tools to create, edit, manage and version-control publications. We have a lot of custom code binding commercial products together to do this. Also, I know we're not the only company in the same industry that does this sort of publishing this way, let alone other non-medical publishers. This is a horribly absurd patent. Obviously nothing in the way of verification of uniqueness of this request was done.

Re:Cat's out of the bag on this one

I'd say that one is patently stupid. If anyone actually tried to sell such a cat exerciser, don't buy it, not just out of protest, but because as with most things, cats become bored of this light trick pretty fast.

Maybe Gore or Bush should be quizzed on this sort of thing tonight. "This patent was awarded, how do you feel about that and would you work to change the way the US Patent office works?"


--
Chief Frog Inspector

Ever wonder... ?

Ever wonder if, when our remembered great inventors applied and received patents, the scientific community complained to each other that it was nothing new?

---
Herald: Hear, Sir Thomas Edison has achieved a patent on his newest variation on the light bulb.

Local inventor: So, he just tries another gas in the sucker and claims it as a new product? Oh, man.

Inventor #2: This is as bad as that Franklin fellow claiming to have discovered 'electricity'. Bloody lightning's been around since time began, and he claims no prior art...
---

OK, so my historical facts are a bit off, but remember: history is written by the winners...
---

Re:CVS?

Totally agree. Before everyone on Slashdot goes crazy about how there is all this prior art from CVS, Zope, and wiki, read the actual press release.

What eMedicine has here is a full content management system. This is not version control. Most importantly every product mentioned as prior art in the /. posting is missing one thing: workflow processes. The ability to automatically enforce some asset be edited by this person, approved by 2 of these 3 people, then moved to staging, approved after UA testing, and moved to production seems to be a key part of what eMedicine has.

This has certainly been done before though not by any of the products mentioned above. Interwoven's Teamsite [interwoven.com] and Vignette's V/5 Content Management Server [vignette.com] are 2 examples of products (and there are a number of others) that seem to do everything mentioned in the press release.

But true content management and workflow support are things that neither CVS, Zope, or wiki have. Slow down Slashdot.