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Patents

Publishing On Internet Patented 166

Posted by CmdrTaco from the that's-kinda-scary dept.
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!
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Publishing on Internet Patented More

Publishing on Internet Patented

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  • pardon my ignorance, but what is wikiwikiweb?


    1. S I T E [mikegallay.com]
      1. U N S E E N

  • Thanks. After reading the patent, I am just confused. The patent describes an application feature set. None of the things described in the patent is new in and of itself, it's just a novel combination of existing technologies. It would be as if Microsoft had gotten a patent on putting a drawing tools menu in Word back when they first let you create graphics in Word. Image programs existed, and word processors existed, but there weren't any programs that did both things simultaneously in the same document.

    Similarly, all the stuff described in this patent is really straightforward. I'm sure the code is copyrightable, but can you really patent a feature set? I guess so. Okay, then I guess it's time to go review all the code I've ever written and see if I've got any patentable feature sets lying around...

  • Sounds a lot like FrontPage... Editing on the net, multi-user, integration with word processing (Word), version control...
  • Why Open Source doesn't patent is because they usually don't intend to sue.

    That's my point... they can hold the patent without caring who infringes on it... the only time it becomes an issue is when someone else tries to patent the same technology in order to agressively control it; they won't be able to get the patent because it will already be in the hands of someone who is more than happy to let the technology be used freely.
  • Isn't having a software patent like having an idea patent?

    So I'm announcing my patent on thinking about software developement, and there shall be a fee of $15.00/hour per person to all non-GNU developers. :)
    Come see my website.
    http://come.to/streiff
  • I'd have to agree that it is already an existing concept, implemented to some degree or other in many software packages. I wrote docs for a product that could do this 3 years ago. I think it's dead now, but it essentially allowed all of this, including the permissions. Curiously, many features of Lotus Notes also could fit within the parameters described... I think they'll have a hard time enforcing it.
  • This sounds a lot like what Documentum [documentum.com] has been doing for 8 or 10 years.

    -dB

  • But, IANAL. For that matter, IANAPL. Hell, IANAKW, even.

    {PL==>Patent Lawyuh; KW==>Karma Whore}


    --
  • umm, im too lazy to go see when this patent was applied for/granted, but every summer for several years my brothers and i have gone to my aunts house and used our laser pointers to make dots on the wall and watch them jump around. Making the dot disappear under a couch caused the cats to run quickly and hit their noses on the couch as they chased that funny little dot.

    Now next time i see my aunt and her cats do i have to pay royalties for the simple enjoyment that red dots bring?

  • No, I cannot cite any evidence. I do remember reading somewhere a quote from an employee of the PTO to that effect. I don't really need evidence, though, because I can plot the relationship over time of the PTO's budget to the number of patent applications filed. They are getting paid less and less to handle more and more work. There is also the fact that payscales in government work almost never keep pace with economic up-turns, so that the difference in wages between the public and private sectors is greater the longer a boom lasts. Then there is the fact that the budget for the PTO is in danger of being cut (for this, I do have a cite: http://www.ied.pios.c om/ news/indnews/Eng_Managers/IN7_12_2000.asp [pios.com]). So, even if you don't accept the evidence that lack of money is not the problem, you must agree that cutting funding is a step in the wrong direction, unless you think we should abolish the PTO altogether and replace it with something else.
  • And where do you propose we find someone who is an expert in computer software, and electronics, and electrical systems, and mechanics, and biotech, and chemistry, and materials science, etc., etc.?

    We don't. The people handing out these patents (in most if not all of these areas) have already demonstrated their incompetence. My solution doesn't do anything to eliminate the incompetence (one could reasonably argue that a competent patent office would be even more dangerous), it simply limits the harm the patent office can cause to those patents an individual patent advocate can process and approve in a single day.

    If we can't eliminate the USPTO (which should be our first priority) we should at least limit its ability to lock up and corden off vast areas of intellectual and business endeavor.
  • What about the WebDAV that has been development? see the IETF [uci.edu] page or the webdav [webdav.org] site, and let's not forget the Apache webdav module mod_dav [webdav.org].

    Plus there is RFC 2518 for it -
    [cmu.edu]
    http://andrew2.andrew.cmu.edu/rfc/rfc2518.html

    While there may not be a 100% fit, there could be enough to invalidate this patent.

  • Mailing yourself something doesn't work as a poor man's copyright since the post office doesn't guarantee anything about the postmarked envelope except that the envelope itself was legally mailed by the date it is postmarked. The enveloped could be marked or unmarked, sealed or unsealed. It is completely possible for you to mail yourself an unsealed envelope and keep for three years before putting information in it an sealing it. Same goes for writing on the envelope.

    Mr. Spey
    Cover your butt, Bernard is watching.
  • Ben Franklin invented the lightning rod
  • The PTO is finding it difficult to retain Examiners. The management recently proposed a 10-15% pay increase in exchange for , among other things, eliminating all the paper files. This proposal was rejected by over 80% of examiners polled, recently. For a discussion of this and other issues from the Patent Examiner's point of view look at the POPA Website. [popa.org] BTW, I am not sure of the current statistics, but to reach 100% of their quota an examiner is allocated, on average, about 15 hours (the eactual figure depends on Grade and "Art"; Computers and Bioptecch get more, buggy whips less) to examine an application, from start to finish

  • Where I work (electronics manufacturing) we use a software system known as a Product Data Management (PDM) system.

    PDM systems let you create documents (typically product designs), revise them, submit them to work flows for approval or futher work, and then store them for retrieval by other users.

    Examples are:

    • Metaphase by SDRC (What we are using)
    • MatrixOne
    • Windchill by Parametrics Technologies
    • Many others

    Many of these products have web interfaces already.

    I think I'll patent a buisiness method of starting a company to create dumb patents and then extort money from companies that can't afford the resources to prove them invalid. Sheesh!

  • "let along be off quills and inkwells."

    What?

    Ancient word processor system. Formally used by dead white males to foment inovation and revolutionary ideas in the 18th century.

    If abortion should be tax payer funded to protect poor women's 4th amendment rights, why not buy them guns to protect their 2nd amendment rights?

  • ... publish patent applications on Slashdot.

    That was actually suggested back in May [slashdot.org], in the article about the first Dickenson/O'Reilly debate. The second debate is tonight, in the DC area, btw.

  • Nope...not according to this.
    When an inventor seeks a patent the PTO performs an examination of the application for that patent which includes a determination of the patentability of the invention. This determination includes a search of what has already been invented so that no patent will issue for any invention already in the public domain. Obviously, not every invention exists in working form or even as a working model, so publications which disclose the invention in sufficient detail for a practitioner to build it or practice it are searched as well. Finally, the invention might be on sale or others might know about it and that would also preclude its patentability, so catalogs and individual knowledge are sought out as well.
    Your envelope idea would yes indeed be prior art, but a firm using something in house does not make something prior art because it isn't on sale, or others knew about, not counting the quote/un-quote inventors. Also, his system does not seem to be quite the same as the one that was outlined by the patent. Please feel free to correct me.

  • A company called Synthesis does the same thing for financial document preparation.
  • At WPI in the computer science building there are posters and signs everywhere that the US-PTO posted to try and get people to come work there. The trouble is that noone wants to. My senior year as an undergrad I took an IP law class, and they came to recruit. Even in a class where people chose to learn this stuff noone was interested. I think that this is the real problem. Perhaps *you* want to work there?

  • They need to hire a few tech people to review tech patents.

    Actually, they need to get support from Congress, who has consistently picked the PTO's review budgets clean for other appropriations.

    Actually, they need to revamp the system so that the abstract of the patent is announced and posted publicly, while the specifics remain in seclusion, for the two years it takes to process the patent application.

    Having the abstract posted publically would allow the "open patent" watchdogs help the PTO find prior art, without giving away specific competitive advantage, which the patent was designed to offer.

  • The problem with lots of patents is that you don't have to prove you did it first, you just have to get the patent first... so why don't all the unique Open Source products out there grab up some patents real quick like? They don't have to enforce them, just make sure no one else can get a patent for the same idea and screw the rest of us over...
  • Okay, between this, Amazon, and that NAT patent attempt that is in the works, WHAT THE FUCK is wrong at the patent office? Don't they like, LOOK into technologies to see where they are being used already and to see if standards documents are published [rfc.net] to be accessible? Are they issuing patents based on buzzwords that corporate entities are slipping in, or are they being bought off by corporations, or are they just so stupid that they can't say "no" to a computing technology patent request anymore?
  • Looks more like WebDAV should be cited as prior art, though. Or perhaps Mozilla's own development system, which has been running for well over two years and can be applied to Websites (Mozilla's own Website does this, in fact).

    Chalk up another boneheaded patent for the USPTO. Someone really needs to give Congress the heads-up on these people, you know?
    ----------

  • IBM may have a few words to say about this. (Score:3)

    by hey! ( 33014 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @07:47AM (#734921) Homepage Journal
    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.

  • Whoa. Waitaminnit.

    I though patents were only supposed to be granted on specific methodologies, not general practices. The system they're describing is one means to an end, and it should be patentable, but it's not the only means to that end.

    To use the archetypal example, can the first person who imagined using a computer to move bits of text around receive a patent on the concept of "word processing"?

  • I like the idea, but such an organization would certainly need funding, as it would be a full-time job for many people to try to track down the prior art and/or experts in various fields to challenge these patents, and I'm not sure how you go about challenging a patent without going to court, which will cost even more money. Who would likely be interested in funding such an organization? Who would it benefit most?

  • I'm going to patent SYNERGY. That'll show them!

  • Sounds like my proposed constitutional amendment:

    Any bill set before congress must, as a prerequisite to becoming a law, be read orally, in its entirety, before the legislative body. Any congresscritter not present throughout the entirety of the reading shall be disqualified from voting upon the bill. If the number of fully qualified congresscritters shall fall below 2/3 of the entirety, no vote shall be taken, and the bill shall not become law.
  • Thanks for the info, my knowledge of Zope is (obviously) limited. However, I am not sure one would be able to use Zope to invalidate this patent. Whatever this eMedicine software really is, it seems to do quite a bit more than Zope does (specifically workflow -- which can be a pretty major thing if it is to be industrial strength). Apparently one can extend ZClasses to have Zope perform workflow management, but I don't see this being an entirely trivial task. I do not pretend to know how the prior art system actually works, but I'm not sure Zope would fit because it is functionally a (potentially small) subset of the functionality in the GPS. The two examples I mentioned in my previous post may work as they appear to do *everything* that the GPS software does.

    But the point in my original post is that it is all about workflow. Content management without workflow is a fish without water (it's just good eating). Properly implemented support for workflow processes can be invaluable and is not (IMHO) obvious.

    To say slashdot is a "content management system" is a bit of a stretch. surely you can author, edit and store stuff but only minimally. versioning does not exist (as far as I know). by this stretch nearly everything is a content management system, even my copy of Quicken with which i can create and edit quicken files and using the Windows file system and explorer for version control, i've got pretty much everything there. Hopefully you see my point. Whether you agree with it or not is not my concern.
  • Is it just me or was this the point of the WWW? many scientists could modify pages either on the unix machines themselves or download and modify locally. Then upload(http push).

    Then someone added version control with cvs, chatting with talk and ytalk and zephyr. and boom. Prior art.

    I am not sure of the order here but I use a unix environment and the web for this purpose regularly.
  • Obviously you all gave not a thought to how great Emedicine is from a medical point of view. Here is the first major effort to produce a quality, peer-reviewed, low cost textbook and reference system entirely via the Internet by actual, board certified doctors and you tear it apart because they decided to patent something that took them a lot of time and effort to put together?

    Ignoring the fact that cvs, zope, and wikiwikiweb do nothing like this, and ignoring the fact that the other prior art brought up by posters wasn't patented (if it was indeed the first such thing, shouldn't they have patented it themselves?). Indeed, the Interwoven website turns up 1 hit for the word 'patent,' and the link doesn't mention any patents of theirs.

    Also, Emedicine is not meant to be a purely doctor-oriented site. Part of the big plan was to publish not only a quality medical textbook, but also a medical reference for ordinary folks in order to better equip them when they see a doctor.

    So, did they patent something? Yes. Was it insubstantiated by prior art? Not that I've seen mentioned yet. Is there anything inherently wrong with what they patented? No. Recall that just because someone takes two known ideas and puts them together doesn't mean that the patent is any less valid.

    If we can then disregard that the patent (however possibly silly) is invalid, I'd think that slashdot would certainly love the idea (and actuality) of Emedicine. Certainly everytime slashdot posts a story about e-medicine in general, the crowd goes wild over the prospect of being diagnosed from their home or being able to have multiple doctors teleconference about their condition. Yet, mention it as a big bad patent story with a bunch of distorted facts and suddenly we'd all like Emedicine's CEO's head on a stick.

    "Open Source, Closed Minds. We are Slashdot," indeed.

  • Franklin studied electricity mostly as a scientist, not as an inventor. To my knowledge, he created no useful inventions with electricity. (He did some of the first pioneering work on it, and is the person responsible for the electron being "negative". He theorized that electricity was caused by a flow between a surplus of something and a shortage of something. He then assigned '-' to one and '+' to another, noting that he had a 50-50 shot of being right. Unfortunately, the dice didn't go his way.)

    I also don't think Franklin ever patented anything, even his real inventions. (The Franklin stove, bifocals, etc.)
  • Hey, these guys should try CVS. I am going to e-mail them a copy. I'll attach the kernel source tree while I'm at it.
  • ... someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't Lynx (the best browser!) had this support since well before 1995?

    Even if not, how on Earth is this not an obvious "invention?" Making programs easier to use (which is exactly what this is doing -- allowing the software to add in the http:// or ftp:// for you) has been a common theme of software design since the personal computer was born.

    You know, I often wonder who gets employed at the patent office. How does their hiring process work, and what kinds of people do they recruit? They obviously don't have any computer-literate employees, which seems odd since they need knowledgeable people to review the growing surge of computer- and Internet-related patents. If they are hiring computer-literate people, they must not be hiring them from the right place -- maybe they should start going to job fairs at Universities. I, for one, would be happy to have a well-paid opportunity to put a stop to some of this madness.

    Just my 2 cents worth...

  • CVS? (Score:5)

    by mholve ( 1101 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @07:28AM (#734933)
    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.

  • we used a system in my English class in college that did all of that. The name fails me, but it was 3 years ago or so...
  • So why isn't CVS patented then? Or for that matter, why has nobody thought to patent an Office suite, or the concept of an operating system. Hell, a device that adds numbers should be able to be patentable even today (provided the method is bizzar enough).

    Folks, are we the whining majority ignorant of the true evils that patenting foster?

    Patents are supposed to foster new technology. They assure rewards for the hard/expensive labor required in R&D. There is a similar situation for copy-rights. Software has copyrights/lefts to prevent the free rider problem, but now patents are being applied in totally inappropriate ways.
    What development time is spent figuring out that you can press a button and purchase something? What development time is there to "figure out that you can do a complete process on the web"? Sure, it takes R&D to make the actual software, and if it can be shown that someone has blatantly reused code and logic from your work, then you can sue them (in essence, forcing competitors to do their own work). But what we have here is the great "idea grab".
    The government is selling off ideas to the first people that can think of something no-one else has _registered_. This is a total perversion of the goals. Blind enforcement of the system is going to lead to the ownership (and hence leasing) of every conceivable aspect of our lives.
    Imagine if Newton patented Calculous, or Fourier spectral analysis. If they were morally-independant corporate types, we wouldn't be allowed do disseminate the advanced mathematics that can be highly profitable when applied to various production schemes - especially in academic environments. Newton and Einstein spent a hell of a lot more of their lives devising their mathematics than modern R&D departments do, and they were more efficient with their results (fewer total man-years, including support personelle).

    Patents and copy-protection are arguably valuable. But it sickens me to see people defend obsurd patents simply because they fit to the letter of the law. People, laws adapt to the times in which they govern. We are a a changing point of history (forgot the name of the mathematical equivalent), and we can either defend the letter of the law (since it helps corporate America (or whichever country)), or we can have some foresight and extrapolate what will become in the not too distant future.

    In case you bring "prior art" into the defence. 1-click is a button.. It's a *@# button. But it can not be used in certain circumstances. An OS has been around for years.. But what if MS patents the use of the OS in a certain fashion. Say, for some brand-new type of media. Once they get a foot-hold, they could carry it out to an extreme.

    struct numeric { int mag, exp };
    Just my numeric worth = { 2, -2 };

    -Michael

  • Nobody challenged this? (Score:3)

    by ThePolack ( 66673 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @07:29AM (#734936)
    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.

  • It sounds like software patents have nothing to do with whether what is being patented is really original or not. It sounds like it is based on who gets to the patent office first.

    Of course, if you don't believe in software patents (e.g., CVS), you get the shaft.

    At some point, shouldn't this kind of thing get to be unenforcable?

  • I happen to like Interwoven's Teamsite product [interwoven.com] which is all run through a browser and has some neat features. Very cool product, and best of all it runs under Solaris, not NT. Unfortunately, no Linux support yet - but I think they're working on that.
  • But true content management and workflow support are things that neither CVS, Zope, or wiki have. Slow down Slashdot.

    Zope's very own Portal Toolkit (PTK) adds workflow processes.

    Check it out here [zope.org].
  • This is a perfect example of the need for a site where people will be able to see pending patents and offer submitions that show examples of prior art for something that is obviously a bogus "innovation"

    I can see it now. There can be a dedicated watchdog that would chack that site regularly and post whenever something ludicrous appears there. Then all slashdotters would go and swamp the site with outraged messages the PTO would find it difficult to plead ignorance then.

  • It's not a joke here's the USPTO entry [164.195.100.11].


    You can find it by going to the USPTO search by patent number [uspto.gov], selecting patent number search and entering 5,443,036.

  • Do you have any idea how much it costs to get a patent approved? Sufficing to say it's cheaper to dispute the patent...
  • As in humans, life span is the maximum, more or less, time the body can survive. 120 years is the high end (maybe some French?). Life expectancy, however, is based on, well, talk to those that work with actuarials, they'll tell you. But in short, if you're born today, your life expectancy might be 73 years (say), though if you're already 73 your life expectancy may well be 92. However, the life span itself doesn't change that way. But then, what to journalists really know about anything deeper than the night?
  • Only if the number of keywords supported is in the patent. But yes, it should be easy to get around... Though adding functionality per. se. is not enough. You need to either remove some functionality, or replace some function with a (preferably better) alternative that isn't described in the patent.
  • They need to hire a few tech people to review tech patents.

    IIRC a major part of the problem is the the USPO is funded in such a way as to encourage passing patents. Thus leading to a situation of pass by default.

  • Re:CVS? (Score:4)

    by supton ( 90168 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @07:52AM (#734946) Homepage
    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 simillar to a press release I read 18-months ago, for a product I was very familliar with. This article uses some of the same language.

    My past employer decided to get out of network reselling and into vertical-market software, and developed a web-publishing product. I became responsible for supporting this and liasing with customers, yet I'd not seen it until moving departments.

    My software had been sold as a web-publishing intranet aid to around 4 organisations. The main selling point was that anyone could publish data, and all documents would be converted into HTML from whatever format they were currently in.

    It was nothing more that a commercial web-server (Lotus Domino in this case - arrggghhh!) together with some custom code and a few 3rd party document conversion libraries.

    It sucked. I hated it. It failed. I just hope that this fails as badly.

  • Basically they are claiming a patent for a content management system, a la Vignette, Broadvision, Allair Spectra and a host of others. So many companies are clamoring to get into this space (including MS with their weak Site Server product) that I think it's safe to say that it's obvious.
  • First off, I'm sorry for not reading all of the /. posts on this article, but THIS JUST PISSES ME OFF!

    Whatever happened to the 'common practice' clause adhered to by the US Patent Office? They screwed Arthur C. Clark out of an extremely lucrative patent. I don't remember any of the dates, but here are the details:

    Arthur C. Clark applied to the U.S. Patent Office for a patent on geostationary orbit. The patent office rejected the application on the basis of infeasibility(or was it impracticality?). Within a few years, the first geostationary satellites went up, and Clark again applied for the patent. This time, the application was rejected on the basis of 'common practice.'

    I'm sorry to add to the simple sheer in opinions, but I'm certain that other people can see where I'm getting at.

    If I understand the application correctly, 'common practice' is just a buzz term essentially meaning that a patent described by the application already exists, but that it's held by the public. (or humanity...whichever you like.)

    For online publishing, 'common practice' is certainly existant, whether or not only specific companies have developed the technology beforehand. For Clark, he was the only developer to apply for the patent at the time when the system he described was not in use.

    To put it simply, there's something majorly screwed up...
  • your prior art was not out for use by the public

    Does it have to be?

    Yes, as a matter of fact it does.

    If so, then 2.5E8 Americans could each individually develop the same solution, use it only in the privacy of their own homes, then get sued when the last guy patents it...

    This was true until a recent change in the U.S. patent law. (How about that, government does something right for a change.) With the change, well, they can still get sued (anyone can sue anyone for anything) but the patent holder won't win.

    However, that applies only to people who came up with it before the patent. If two people independently come up with the same invention, and the latter inventor patents it, then the first inventor can keep doing it, but the patent holder can still stop anyone else from doing it.

  • 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.

    Sheesh, where the fsck did you get that idea? It's just plain wrong. And what idiot moderators modded this up as informative?

    Don't take my word for it; look it up here [lawofcjdj.com].

  • You're right that currently, U.S. patent applications aren't published. But...

    The sad thing is that the US thinks this is such a Good Idea(tm) that it's trying to force this absurd concept on the rest of the world.

    On the contrary, the U.S. is set to begin publishing patent applications next year. They're not "trying to force this absurd concept on the rest of the world."

    There is an exception that if the inventor signs a disclaimer that he's going to file for a patent only in the U.S., he can prevent publication of the application. But if he later changes his mind and files in a foreign country, the application will then be published.

  • This appears to be the patent in question: (Score:3)

    by ninjaz ( 1202 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @07:53AM (#734953)
    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]

  • Lotus Notes has been doing the online authoring/reviewing/publishing thing since at least version 3 (1993?). Lotus web-enabled the Notes product 'round about 1995. Technically, it didn't ship as a fully functional web publishing application, but as a template that required about 5 minutes of programming to use. Still, it seems that it would be publicly available prior art...

  • Also, that(patent) pretty much defines what a Laboratory Information Management System _is_. (See my webpage for more info if you feel motivated.) The whole point is modeling the workflow so your content(published reports or peer-reviewed articles) meet your labs quality standards...

    And yes, most LIMS do enforce content approval of some form or another. They also support an audit trail so you can see the most recent values of your results and all the changes that have occured in the past....

    Granted, we are not talking about something that will do production management on your whole report... just the results of individual experiments. However, given how vague most patents are, I'm sure that a good lawyer could probably make a compelling case

    Prior art... I submit the entire LIMS industry. :)


    ---
    RobK
  • I think that for the foreseeable future we will be treated to at least one patent article per week. Many people will post, most posts will contain the text IANAL but.

    Clearly there are many geeks interested in the effect of patents patentability. slashdot is doing a good job of exposing the dangers and the ignorance, but I fear no progress is being made toward a solution. We need more patent saavy geeks.

    To that end, I request that slashdot retain a patent lawyer to write commentary on the slashdot patent articles. Perhaps consider it a tutorial on the state of patent law built from real world examples as they develop.

    I think it would be best to pick a mainstream practicing lawyer rather than an academic or reformer. I think the perspective of the day to day legal realities would serve best.

    To that end, lets consider this comment a petition and all those in favor reply to this article with a subject of AYE.
  • This sounds a lot like software for creating virtual communities, which we have just learned are a myth [slashdot.org].
  • Obviously you're not that up on US patent law. Unlike most other countries (Japan for example) patents aren't public knowledge until they're granted. Pending patents aren't released by the USPTO.

    This has its bad points and good points, but the important thing is that unless we break the law, we can't get copies of patents before they're granted. So even if an absurd patent is filed, only the Monkeys working for the USPTO have access to it before it's granted. If they're not smart enough (or diligent enough, which is the real case) to accurately assess the patent, then it goes through uncontested.

    The sad thing is that the US thinks this is such a Good Idea(tm) that it's trying to force this absurd concept on the rest of the world.

  • I just read the press release and all I saw was marketing quotes from a developer and a manager-type. I didn't see a patent number nor any quotes directly from the patent.

    A quick search over at the USPTO [uspto.gov] didn't turn up any patents with "eMedicine" in them. So, how can we know what they really patented? Maybe they came up with a nifty compression algorithm that they use in their "GPS" and that's the thing that's patented. Who knows?

    Quote from the search page:
    eMedicine: 0 occurrences in 0 patents.
  • I've seen a couple of system like this. It looks more like PCVS or Project Control Version Software. The only difference here is that they include video and audio and publishing. Hmm CVS with a web publishing front end maybe?

    On another note I have also seen a tool developed originally by Cnet called PRISM which is now sold as storyserver, which has some of this functionality. This is more like a combination of this and cvs.

    Obvious "to one of ordinary skill in the art", but of course not to a lawyer........

    I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
    Flame away, I have a hose!

  • Let's hope that the patent itself isn't as vague as the description is. Stuff like Napster and Gnutella could be swallowed up by this.
  • Actually, I'd like to know if the patent system fulfills any of its original stated purpose by protecting inventors from idea theft. Don't most inventors work for these companies anyway?

  • Re:CVS? (Score:3)

    by eMBee ( 27441 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @08:16AM (#734976) Homepage
    Roxen Platform [roxen.com] handles workflow too (and cvs and xml and all the rest...

    greetings, eMBee
    --

  • Content Management+Editorial+Workflow+Publishing? Newspaper editorial systems do this already; for example, the DewarView system from Harris, which is a prepress system that uses a database to manage versions of documents created using a MS Word-based editing environment for publishing. Other pre-press systems, I can't recall which at this point (but there are dozens of them), have builtin workflow managment systems. This is nothing new. Seriously, take a good look at products on the exposition floor being demoed at any major publishing conference, such as NEXPO (newspapers), etc, and you will see tons of vendors selling this sort of stuff.

  • Doesn't matter. It's still prior art. (Score:4)

    by Svartalf ( 2997 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @08:19AM (#734980) Homepage
    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.
  • [d.v]: Hey there. I was reading up on your patent, and was wondering how you could claim that this was new and unique.

    [PR]: Very simple. We have the patent. Ha ha ha.

    [d.v]: But it is not an idea which is non-obvious and is built on other content-revision-control systems. So how could you file for a patent.

    [PR]: (After he pops me in the head a few times) We have the patent, moron. Ha ha ha!
  • They have gone on record numerous times as being unsure about some of these patents but unable to research prior art properly due to lack of funding.

    In which case they should be rejecting pantents, maybe at random, mayve every application in a specific area.
  • Starting next year, the USPTO will publish applications.

    Publishing is only any good if anyone (including an individual) can then rip an obvious, vague or stupid application to bits.
    Otherwise it's just a publicity gimick.
  • Actually, a lot of pre-press editorial systems for newspapers and magazines do this sort of thing - the only difference is that their finsished work is not only internet output, but print stuff as well.

    See the bottom part of the story in this Newspaper Association of America Technews story [naa.org]. Workflow is a fairly common element of any groupware-oriented intranet application, even for publshing industry.

    So even if Zope doesn't do workflow managment natively, for example, it doesn't take much to track such data in ZClasses that one puts together in 10 minutes, combined with the WorldPilot product to create an entire intranet publishing workflow system.

  • I do not have all the numbers and I hope to prompt someone more knowlegable to reply to me.

    Your facts may be more then a little off. When patents first started being granted, there were far fewer. The head of the patent office could review each one personally. This is obviously impossible today.

    I do not think that you would find anywhere near the volume of patents being generated in Edison's time... not counting Edison, who was patent happy even by modern standards.

    Could anyone clear me up/correct me?

  • your prior art was not out for use by the public
    Does it have to be? If so, then 2.5E8 Americans could each individually develop the same solution, use it only in the privacy of their own homes, then get sued when the last guy patents it...
  • ...Since we know that Al Gore invented the internet and everything on it. I'd be very pissed off if i was him. =^/

    i've looked at love from both sides now. from win and lose, and still somehow...

  • Here's the Patent [ibm.com]

    The frightful thing is that many other softwares already use this similar method. I remember using NetObjects Fusion Authoring Server to do pretty much what this patent does.

    Also, this is another old news story. Emedicine announced this back in early August on their site, from the news postings.

    Dragon Magic [dragonmagic.net]
  • How come these stories are only posted (here and elsewhere) once the patent has actually been granted? Surely it would be more benificial to report on these when they are still in the pending stage?

    Rather than whinging about it too late we should be shouting prior art and wotnot before they get as far as being granted the patent.

  • I'll submit prior art! (Score:4)

    by PacketMaster ( 65250 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @07:37AM (#735014) Homepage
    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.
  • I also work at Interwoven [interwoven.com], and from talking to a few other people I've gathered that the official line is, "If there's a sufficient demand, we'll do it." The thing is, even though the Teamsite server has to run on Solaris or NT (including Win2k) the web server can run on just about any server OS; that includes the development webserver which can sit on a different computer than the Teamsite server.

    Additionally, most of Interwoven's customers are Big Business, namely companies which run pretty heterogenuous computing environments (from what I've seen), meaning that of those who are running webservers on 'other' OSes, such as Linux, they will always have at least some Solaris or NT boxes 'lying around'. This adds up to very little demand from customers for other ports thus far. At least that's the way I interpret the situation.

    I would love to have a Linux port myself since only Sparc Solaris is supported meaning I have to run the NT version on my Laptop -- No offense to NT fans, I just prefer to work in a unix-like environment; and yes I'm aware of Cygwin, but *sigh* it's just not the same.

    Everything in this post is my personal opinion and does not represent an official position from Interwoven.

    Chris
  • It's fun looking at the patent references; stacks of lame-ass patents all made in the last 10 years.
    "Method and system for managing communications within a collaborative data processing system" etc.
  • While you're at it, cc: The patent office, although judging from some recent patents issued they may not be on the internet, let along be off quills and inkwells.


    --
    Chief Frog Inspector
  • We already have such an organization. They are called the US Patent and Trademark Office. They have gone on record numerous times as being unsure about some of these patents but unable to research prior art properly due to lack of funding. The lack of funding also has the effect of driving all but the dullest and least adventurous into the private sector; many of those who leave get jobs as IP attorneys.

    The result: a class of talented IP attorneys with an unholy knowledge of the inner workings of the patent office. These attorneys are not necessarily concerned with the enforceability of the patents they secure for their clients. In fact, their interests are best served if they can get a large number of questionable patents, creating work for themselves (and their college buddies) in IP litigation.

    As with a lot of things, you get what you pay for. The government is not committed to spending enough on the USPTO to ensure that they can hire quality people to do quality work. On the other side of the equation, investors *know* that the only thing valuable in a tech company is the IP, so companies generally make lots of money available for the hiring of IP lawyers and the filing of potentially dubious patents. The outcome easy to predict.

  • ...IMHO is more of a business process patent.

    That doesn't make it right, though. How different, really, is their ``patentable'' process from, say, a product from Oracle that allow people to work on purchase orders which then go through several levels of authorization before being receiving a final approval? Hell, there was a plan to use a commercial product that implemented this particular process that was being considered for purchase in the late 1980's when I worked at Ohio U.

    I have to believe that there have been software packages that have done this before and have been around for years. Ask Boeing how they did all their maintenance manuals. I doubt that there was one or two people sitting in a cubicle cranking out 747 maintenance manuals. This is the sort of thing that the heavy users of SGML have been up to for some time now. What ever happened to Datalogics (well, these guys got bought out by someone; I forget who) and companies like that who sold publishing software? They ought to be able shoot quite a few prior art holes in this patent.



    --

  • Re:Cat's out of the bag on this one (Score:3)

    by ackthpt ( 218170 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @08:47AM (#735033) Homepage Journal
    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... ? (Score:4)

    by MWoody ( 222806 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @07:38AM (#735036)
    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...
    ---

  • and it's called slash [slashcode.com]. I think some of you may have heard of it before. :-)

    Seriously, slash is very similar to the system they described and it would be mondo prior art.
    --
  • Looks to me like this could be a valid patent. It isn't just CVS; it includes built in editing and communication facilities, plus it's a publishing system, which makes it sound like it covers more than CVS.

    Of course, it seems a silly idea to patent collaborative software like that. If you want to get around it, I'd suggest adding or removing functionality. Varying the number of keywords supported should be just as valid as varying the number of clicks required to buy.

  • Or GeoCities, or any other website that allows you to publish via a web brower.

    Next thing to be patented is a system to store information dynamicly in something called a "table".
  • Wow. I wonder how 'a beam of invisible light' becomes visible when it hits something...
  • People need to start getting a clue: this kind of software is a _service_ not a commodity, and even with an investment in expensive collaborative environments, you're still going to need the services. So why not start with Free Software, and then get the services?

    Frankly, sometimes I wonder why people keep creating these collaboritve environments, community servers, whatever you want to call them.
    And then to claim they're revolutionary in any way.... that's a travesty. They all do pretty much the same thing: you create forms, which have data that go into databases or files (with perhaps some processing along the way), and then, the appropriate data comes out on some other page.
    Most of this stuff can be done by a small team of good programmers in a few months. The abstraction is largely for the clueless... but many of the clueless won't figure out how to use the abstraction anyway, and many can also just hire a small team of good programmers.

    Case in point: Broadvision, and my employer. My employer is HUGE. Big enough to have scads of programmers -- and some of them are essentially sitting around doing nothing. But rather than asking these programmers to implement some forms that non-tech employees could fill out to develop web pages, they went out and got courted by Broadvision and bought a whole package from them for who knows how much and sent the _managers_ and other non-technical folks off for training in it. With 2-3 months of PHP or PERL and Database work and I could have duplicated the functionality they wanted. Instead, they spent 2-3 months training half a dozen people (from my dept. alone) who probably still don't get it. And the funny thing is, Broadvision will probably get ongoing consulting fees (I guess this is why people produce software).
  • I hate to be the one to say this, but if a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it, did it make a sound?

    how is someone going to prove something like this or disprove it if the prior art that you've stated was never seen by anyone outside of that limited sphere of your company and it's authors?

    Again, if you thought it was such a great idea, maybe they should have patented it.

    So now that the idea is out, disprove it with your claim of prior art. Show that your app has been around for 15 yrs and disprove the patent.
  • The head of the patent office could review each one personally. This is obviously impossible today.

    No it isn't.

    Indeed, I think you may have hit on a possible solution to the absurdly patent-happy frenzy we are seeing. Require the head of the US Patent Office to personally review and critique any patent application before it is granted. Disallow any and all deligation of this task.

    That might, just might, reduce the explosion of patents sufficiently to allow our high-tech economy to survive another few years.

    I guarantee, if something isn't done about this absurdity real soon now, we are going to have the dubious distinction of having watched first hand while the IP lawyers flush our most promising industry down the drain.

    But then, maybe that is what the politicians want: technological progress slowed to a crawl so they can keep up, and keep lining their pockets with our hard work.
  • I'm sorry, but mailing yourself something can be useful in case of a copyright issue, but not for patents. I someone copies word-for-word something you wrote, then showing the envelope *proves* that you were the first to write that and that the only way the other guy got that word-for-word is by copying your work.

    It doesn't work the same for patents, since many people can come up with the same idea at once, without copying each other. When two companies work on the same idea at the same time, the one that gets the patent is the first one to submit, not the first one who started working on it (even if they can prove it).

    Publications however, can be considered as prior art, and that's why IBM (I think) publishes a journal just for ideas they don't want to patent, so that others can't patent either. If auto-mailing worked, they wouldn't bother publishing that.
  • They problem is, is that your prior art was not out for use by the public. As you said yourself that it is custom code binding commercial applications together. Now, if you guys would have released this custom code, then that would be prior art. But you didn't, so it's not.

  • The Ultimate Stupid Patent [ibm.com] surfaced today in the most appropriate of places: rec.humor.funny. The posting [netfunny.com] is also available on the RHF website [netfunny.com]. Unless IBM's patent site is involved with a practical joke, this one's for real, I'm afraid.

    Perhaps one of the candidates will pledge to shut down the USPTO until such time as they get a clue...

  • It's not a problem of patents being Open Source or not. Its a problem that these patents:

    1. are for ideas already implemented by other individuals

    2. are trivial in concept.

    To take an extreem example, consider using buttons on shirts. The idea is trivial and has already been implemented by other manufacturers. An application for patent of buttons should be rejected for these reasons. The same standard for physical inventions such as buttons should hold true for software patents as well.

    Patent law, when applied properly, can benifit society, but instances such as Emedicene's patent does much more damage than good.

  • Slash, cvs, wiki and such are similar, but check out MatrixOne [matrixone.com]. As far as I can tell it's a framework being used by lots of people to implement *exactly* that kind of system.

  • Re:CVS? (Score:5)

    by _Swank ( 118097 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @07:43AM (#735061)
    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.

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