Slashdot Log In
LSI Patents the Doubly-Linked List
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Thu Nov 23, 2006 12:45 PM
from the all-your-b-trees-are-belong-to-me dept.
from the all-your-b-trees-are-belong-to-me dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Back in April, LSI was granted patent number 7028023. This is a patent on a stunning new technique in data structures ... the concept that a linked list can in fact have multiple orderings. Of course, this has been used since the beginning of (computer) time in the form of doubly-linked lists. Even if LSI wants to (somehow) claim that the doubly-linked list doesn't count as prior art, maintaining linked lists of graphical objects sorted by both x and y co-ordinates for collision detection has been done since "graphical objects" meant ASCII characters on a green-on-black screen, and has probably been widespread in databases for probably even longer."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
OK, this is just ridiculous. (Score:5, Insightful)
I couldn't imagine LSI ever intends to protect the patent (since it obviously would never stand up in court). Most likely, they are just seeking bragging rights "Hey look, we had 30 patents approved this year".
Our government needs to more clearly delineate what software can and cannot be patented in order to prevent more ridiculous patents. I'm more in the 'No Software Patents' camp, but I think there are exceptions, particularly for very specialized software in specific industries.
Re:OK, this is just ridiculous. (Score:5, Interesting)
Ah no this is not necessarily the case. Sometimes it takes longer then this without having to go through appeal.
This is often true but usually it is the first one that is clueless. If it is appealed then the second examiner has the comments of the first - as well as the listed prior art. So the end result is that appeal you actually need to come back and show why the claimed prior art is not really prior art. This is tougher. (Been there done that.)
Unlikely that they would be able to protect it but I doubt that they did it for 'bragging rights'. It is too expensive to do it for 'bragging rights.'
Parent
Re:OK, this is just ridiculous. (Score:5, Insightful)
Bragging rights are totally worthwhile, if they keep investors happy. And corporations routinely spend up to 30% of their revenue on keeping investors happy. The cost of a few bogus patents are peanuts as a part of that.
Parent
Re:OK, this is just ridiculous. (Score:5, Insightful)
No! That would only make things worse. Government is always too slow in this kind of thing anyway. Just do away with "software" patents completely. Copyright yes - of the FINISHED WORK. Patents no. It's like a painter who wants to patent or copyright every separate blob of paint on his canvas. This does not make sense.
Parent
Re:OK, this is just ridiculous. (Score:5, Interesting)
A large oil company spends $1 Billion developing a 3d nuclear imaging robot that burrows into the ground to explore for oil. This robot is so effective at what it does that they patent it to ensure they protect their investment.
A large oil company spends $1 Billion developing software that takes existing geological maps and analyzes it in a novel way. This robot is so effective at what it does that they patent it to ensure they protect their investment.
The investment and results are the same in either case, the only difference is that we're talking about something physical instead of software. An outright "No Software Patents" stance would say that any company could then duplicate the oil company's unique software, leaving them no protection for their massive investment and intellectual property. Why would software be any different than a machine here?
If we remove all software patents, we also remove part of the incentive for large corporations to invest in software. There needs to be some protections, they just need to be smart.
Parent
Re:OK, this is just ridiculous. (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, it's up to the oil company to make sure that no one gets their hands on the software, just like Coca Cola makes sure no one finds out about the "secret formula". If someone outright steals the software and sells it to someone else, copyright law is now full of 6 figure fines and jail time - enforce THAT. What's really happening is that people are not protecting systems. They are trying to "protect" tiny parts of programs. This essentially stops anyone else from creating a program that does roughly the same thing. Even if it does that same thing in a different way, it will definitely wind up in court. That's absurd. Yes the whole system you describe warrants protection.
But not the individual algorithms for goodness sakes. Here you could argue "but what about scientific formula and drugs, and the pharmaceutical industry". That's different - these people are FORCED to reveal their work in order to pass the FDA. They need greater protection since they can't keep the contents of their meds a secret. But for the rest, I think most of burden of protecting trade secrets should fall on the industry that has the secret - not everyone else having to prove via defensive litigation that their software does NOT infringe on a "patent" for some algorithm or other because it does something similar.
Parent
Re:OK, this is just ridiculous. (Score:5, Insightful)
And thus, the company never publishes the things they discovered and society has to keep reinventing them, since everyone who discovers them keeps them secret. Whereas with patents, the company gets a monopoly on that particular thing for 20 years and then society is free to use it for eternity. What you propose just results is massive duplication of research.
Parent
Re:OK, this is just ridiculous. (Score:5, Interesting)
Patents, therefore, are a tradeoff. They protect the inventor while encouraging them to disclose their techniques. Thus, the inventor gets something (a government protected monopoly for a limited period), and society gets something (access to the details of the technology).
As for software patents, I have no problem with them on the surface (well, except for those that are obvious, but that's a problem with the patent office, not patents in general). However, I think software patents should have a more limited lifespan. After all, 20 years is a *very* long time in the world of computing (just think how different things were in 1986). Something like 4 or 5 years makes far more sense.
Parent
Re:OK, this is just ridiculous. (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that for almost all software patents, a monopoly is being granted for details we did not actually need to know, because they are obvious to anyone 'skilled in the art'. Or even 'unskilled in the finger daubing'. The value of the monopoly is much, much, greater than the value of the information we're getting.
I'd venture that this is true not just of software patents, but in software, the progress made in the absence of a patent regime for so many years spoke volumes about the lack of a need for patent protection.
Parent
Re:OK, this is just ridiculous. (Score:5, Insightful)
Give this AC the whole EFFing bakery. Finally, someone who actually understands the effects of software patents in the real world.
In the "copyright debate" there is lots of arguing back and forth about the necessity of copyrights to encourage the "progress of science the useful arts." But it is all just a bunch of postulating.
Here we have demonstrable proof that software patents are not necessary because the whole shebang is only about a decade old, and their creation has not done anything to markedly improve the situation. If anything, it has been the reverse with proprietary software stagnating and consolidating into a handful of big corps like MS and Oracle. All the really innovative stuff is happening in the Free world which is antithetical to the idea of software patents.
Parent
Re:OK, this is just ridiculous. (Score:5, Insightful)
So basically we have 2 options:
1. Disallow software patents, people wishing to protect their work will keep it secret and other people can come up with their own (probably very similar) solutions to the same problem.
2. Allow software patents and therefore prevent *anyone* else from producing anything similar on their own.
Option (1) seems like the better option to me since at least it allows third parties to come up with a solution. Remember that in most cases the patent holder either won't licence their technology at all, will licence it for infeasable amounts of money, or put very restrictive terms on the licence (what good is the ability to use some technology if you're not allowed to integrate it into your FOSS project?)
And this is assuming you even realise you're infringing someone's patent. Remember, you're still infringing a patent even if you came up with the idea on your own - all too often a product is developed independently, becomes very successful and then the producer is sued for infringing a patent that they had never heard of. It's now got to the point where it's pretty much impossible to write a piece of software without infringing _someone's_ patent.
Also, from my experience the threat of people suing for patent infringement often motivates corporations to keep source code closed which they would otherwise be happy to open to the public - this is certainly not a good thing.
Patents have been turned into ammunition for large corporations - having 100,000 patents prevents the guy who only has 80,000 patents from suing you. Unfortunately the little guy who's got no patents and no money for lawyers gets completely squashed in the process. Maybe patents are sometimes good for small inventors, but they are open to abuse by large organisations. And even if you are in the right and have prior art, how the hell are you, as a single person on your own, going to be able to defend yourself in court against some huge corporation such as IBM, Microsoft, HP, etc?
Parent
Re:OK, this is just ridiculous. (Score:5, Insightful)
The "only" difference? You make that sound like it is of minor importance. It is not. Software is intellectual property. You don't go around patenting the plot of a book or a movie, the chord-progression in a song, the concept of "self-help" audiotapes, or the new mathematical theorems discovered by some genius mathematician (or algorithms, business methods, or sequences of base-pairs for that matter, although sadly the US has started doing just that)
Patents are a very specific right that is granted specifically to give the inventor of new inventions a fair chance of recouping his investments. Unlike music or software, which is protected by copyright, once someone invents e.g. the four-stroke combustion engine, anyone is free to produce it. Patents are designed to help the inventor here, it's not a general purpose mechanism of protecting all kinds of "ideas". The "default" position is to have no patents at all. Arguing that since patents protect one kind of idea, it should protect other kinds of ideas, is completely silly. And patenting software, business processes, or genes is also silly.
Exactly. We remove some of the incentive for large corporations to invest in software. At the same time, most of the incentives remains, such as having some new software "that takes existing geological maps and analyzes it in a novel way". This software can be used internally for finding oil, it can be licensed to other companies, or used in lots of other ways to generate profit.
Also, it should be made clear that even if software patents benefits large companies (which I believe was true at some point, although I'm starting to doubt it still is), it does not benefit small companies. Taking away software patents makes it easier for small companies to invest in software. I'm not particularly in favour of laws that only benefits large companies.
Parent
Re:OK, this is just ridiculous. (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:OK, this is just ridiculous. (Score:5, Funny)
Because "nuke" is 3 times shorter than "microwave," and approximately 5 times more fun to say.
Parent
Re:OK, this is just ridiculous. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's because being ambiguous and self-contradictory is its purpose. [fsf.org]
Parent
Well, duh (Score:5, Funny)
Patent reform anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Patent reform anyone? (Score:5, Interesting)
What you need is legal reform.
And not what has passed as tort "reform" in our political debate. Freedom of the press was once said to belong to the man who owns one. Now justice is the right of every man to the degree he can pay for it.
What passed as tort reform was about restricting access of individuals to the legal system. Such a restriction would limit abuse by individuals, it is true; it would also limit legitimate uss of the legal system by the little guy, leaving the wealthy in full possession of the tools of legal extortion.
Patent reform would take away one tool of legal extortion by parties with deep pockets, so as far as it goes it is good. Also, the existing legal tools against filing false patent claims should be enforced vigorously.
I think that extortion by frivolous legal threat should be a felony. People who use this should be face criminal and civil penalties. Companies that use this tactic should be treated as racketeers. Lawyers who abet this should be disbarred and jailed.
Conceptualy, what could be simpler? Naturally, you want to said the bar for frivolity very high. But once a few bugs have been squashed against that windshield, the rest will learn to avoid it.
Parent
WTF? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is:
- prior art
- obvious use of technology
- using existing technology exactly as intended AND documented
- merely a clever rewording of existing techniques
America really, REALLY needs to eliminate software patents, and the USPTO should issue a statement saying "to protect your software innovations, refer to the Copyright Act." But of course, patent application fees keep the USPTO running and provide job security, so we won't see that common sense rule come into place in the foreseeable future.
Probably because LSI have only just discovered it (Score:5, Funny)
I'd like to make a suggestion... (Score:5, Interesting)
They'd have a decent revenue stream from high quality patents and an incentive NOT to just push things through a past a rubber stamp...
They'd have to employ real talent then for patent examiners...
Not exactly (Score:5, Informative)
A double linked list implies reverse pointers allowing forward and backward traversal of a list. The patent in question is more broad than that. It is talking about multiple links allowing different orderings at the same time for the same elements. So you could have a list of, say, files with links giving alphabetical order, and links giving size order, and thirdly links giving file types without having to resort the list. You might use this in a file-list screen.
The patent is still absurd, but the summary is (as usual) inaccurate.
USPTO is a joke... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What's next? Patent on "Arrays that self grow"? (Score:5, Funny)
That patent is already owned by Microsoft, and is in use in their operating systems and device drivers. Most people call it "bloat"
Parent
I Agree (Score:5, Funny)
Until that day comes along, I guess we just have to see Parent [slashdot.org] and ensure we keep patenting appropriately.
Oops, I now have a doubly-linked post. I suppose I should expect a call from LSI soon.
Parent