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Microsoft Patents Your Rights Online

USPTO Issues Microsoft A Patent For 60's Technology 53

Posted by timothy from the remember-who-pays-for-patents dept.
theodp writes "On Tuesday, the USPTO issued U.S. patent no. 6,594,674 to Microsoft for a System and method for creating multiple files from a single source file, which describes a fundamental IBM Mainframe file structure, the Partitioned Data Set, that's been around since the 60's and is familiar to virtually anyone who's used a mainframe text editor in the past five decades. To the amazement of readers of an IBM newsgroup, neither Microsoft nor the USPTO examiners seem to be aware of the existence of the Mainframe-based prior art, which is not cited in the patent."
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USPTO Issues Microsoft A Patent For 60's Technology More

USPTO Issues Microsoft A Patent For 60's Technology

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  • Reiser FS (Score:5, Informative)

    by phnx90 ( 208011 ) <amayil@@@sdf...lonestar...org> on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @10:08AM (#6452725) Homepage
    Doesnt Reiser FS 4 [namesys.com] also have this feature.

  • Prior Art (Score:3, Funny)

    by kurosawdust ( 654754 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @10:14AM (#6452765)
    From poll "Number of Non-Hidden Files in your Home Directory", code snippet submitted by AC:

    for ((a=0; a<99999999; a++));
    do
    &nbsp; touch file$a;
    done

    Creates multiple files from a single source file.
    Prior art.
    My foot's asleep.

  • Next patent (Score:5, Funny)

    by Baikala ( 564096 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @10:15AM (#6452782) Journal

    In another news Microsoft applies for a patent on "circular-shaped-low-friction moving support for vehicles" as an adendum to it's "Microsoft wheel patent".

    Officials are not aware of any prior art
    • Low-friction wheels don't work very well, as is evidenced by the difficulty in driving on ice, wet roads, that annoying metal grating on some bridges, etc. In fact, one of the reasons wheels work as well as they do is that the edge in contact with the ground is not moving (relative to the ground) and as such, can apply a force relative to its (higher) coefficient of static friction, rather than the lower coefficient of kinetic friction.
      • Though, in truth, it depends on where you're talking about the friction. The ideal wheel has infinite surface friction, zero rotational(axle) friction, and infinite friction between it and the drive train... (Though one-way friction is more useful for the drive train, allow coastin a la clutch down...)
      • Low-friction wheels don't work very well, as is evidenced by the difficulty in driving on ice,

        Standard Microsoft design error for well known process.
        (sigh)

  • Even the System 7 Finder had a feature [still exists in OS X] for creating "stationary".

    Any file with the "Stationary" checkbox checked, becomes a template of sorts and opens not the original, but a copy of the stationary, ready for saving, etc.

    You figure with all the massive amounts of obvious prior art that the USPTO would be slightly less broken about this one.

    Sigh
    • The USPTO, as with most governmental agencies that collect money from the citizens, get only a small fraction of the funds they collect back from Congress. This is a fundamental flaw in almost every agency. /. sees it the most with regards to the USPTO.

      Time to get out there and vote to have that changed.

  • Loopback?? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by linuxwrangler ( 582055 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @10:41AM (#6452987)
    dd if=/dev/zero of=patentedbyMS bs=1024k count=1024
    mke2fs -b 1024 -F patentedbyMS
    mount -t ext2 -o rw,loop=/dev/loop patentedbyMS /mnt/priorart
    • That sounds almost exactly like what they patented. Basically, they patented the idea of a loopback filesystem, by which a file on a filesystem is used as an entire filesystem. Someone needs to take M$ to court. It seems too easy to prove that there was prior art.
      • Easy but expensive.

        We get this all the time in my workplace (I do drugs for a living;).
        Many companies file recursive claims that contain an infinite amount of different existing and new compounds, these patents are accepted without many problems. In practice this means that companies can settle for some royalty agreement to avoid figuring out the prior art in court (sometimes without their actually knowing what 'intellectual property' they are getting the money for...)

  • the 60's (Score:4, Funny)

    by jpsst34 ( 582349 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @10:46AM (#6453048) Journal
    I can't speak for the Patent Office, but MS aren't aware of this prior art because he's simply too young. In the 60's, Gates hadn't even smoked his first crack pipe yet.
    • My experience is that IBM has a rather good supply of information to patent offices in an information disclosure bulletin.

      Nevertheless, this kind of information can still be missed by patent offices in a search. I am at this moment checking the (in-)validity of several patents for which applications have been filed about ten years ago. Already at that time, not every patent office (Europe, US; Japan used to be and most of the time still is very slow) was able to gather the proper prior art for every applic

  • Can This Actually Be Patented? (Score:4, Informative)

    by ratboy666 ( 104074 ) <fred_weigel AT hotmail DOT com> on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @10:56AM (#6453145) Journal
    I guess the answer is "Yes, a patent was granted".

    Now I am going to be a mudraker. Here is an implementation of this patent under
    Linux (so sue me). Effectively only 6 lines of shell script. Do what you want with it.

    I would have thought that it should take longer than 4 minutes to implement a patent -- this one is really pushing "obvious", even ignoring the prior art issue.

    # create a 2mbyte pds
    dd if=/dev/zero of=myfile bs=1k count=2k
    # make it into a file system (pds) /sbin/mke2fs myfile
    # make a mount point for the pds
    mkdir mydir
    mount myfile mydir -o loop
    # make some files in the new pds
    for i in a b c d; do touch mydir/$i; done
    # and now some links to the members
    for i in a b c d; do ln -s mydir/$i $i; done
    # now, if you modify file a, b, c or d
    # the contents of the pds "myfile" are changed.
    # the pds can be unmounted, and read or
    # written as a single file "cp myfile myfile2"
    # would be an example.
    # When mounted the symbolic links allow automatic
    # internal access

    Ratboy.

  • Besides mainframes (Score:2, Informative)

    by mrami ( 664567 )
    On a not-so-close reading wouldn't Macs' resource and data forks and ResEdit fall under this patent as well?
    • It wouldn't surprise me. It seems to me that Apple and Microsoft are engaged in the Sumo foot-stomping routine that takes place just before those massive 500lb bodies slam into each other.

      Just the other day Apple killed a Windows desktop mod that emulated the Dock (y'zdock). Windows Longhorn is planning to have a dock-like UI gadget. Microsoft has filed a weird-ass patent that could impact Apple. Apple develops a browser. MS kills a browser. And so on.

      I begin to suspect there's some really bad blood

  • Amazed? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by reynaert ( 264437 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @11:06AM (#6453228)

    To the amazement of readers of an IBM newsgroup, neither Microsoft nor the USPTO examiners seem to be aware of the existence of the Mainframe-based prior art, which is not cited in the patent."

    I don't understand why they are amazed. Mainframe technology is essentielly the Dark Age of Computing. Nobody knows about it, and no place teaches it.

    What are "Partitioned Data Sets"? Dunno, I've never heard of them. The link certainly doesn't explain, that's just dinosaur mumbo jumbo. (And what's so special about that editor screenshot?)

    This is by the way IBM is porting Linux to their mainframes. Customers might need the high reliability etc., but they still won't buy them if they can't find anyone who knows how to use the native operating systems, let alone program them.

    • Re:Amazed? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by linuxwrangler ( 582055 )
      Wrong. What is true is that people get immersed in their own areas of expertise and when they look up they are "amazed" that there is more to the world. Just look at todays /. story about TRON. How many IT people do you think have heard of that? Almost none (till today), I'd wager. That doesn't change the fact that there are billions of copies in use.

      The mainframe is far from dead. There are lots of jobs that are better handled by something other than sticking a bunch of x86 processors in a room together a
    • What are "Partitioned Data Sets"? Dunno, I've never heard of them. The link certainly doesn't explain, that's just dinosaur mumbo jumbo.

      A Partitioned Data Set (PDS) is basically a directory. You can store multiple different files within the PDS, and access each one of them separately.

      Also, it's very easy to reference the PDS as a whole. Very handy for back-ups & restores, for example.

      I hope mainframe skills aren't totally useless, because I've got 20 years worth of them!

      !sig

  • Does this mean people running things like CICS have to pay Micro$oft on royalties? This deserves the foot, man.

  • neither Microsoft nor the USPTO examiners seem to be aware of the existence of the Mainframe-based prior art, which is not cited in the patent.

    In all fairness, Microsoft probably knew full well that this prior art existed. Putting that in the patent application would be like sending the USPTO a stamped, self-addressed rejection letter!

    It's the USPTO people who are missing this experience to find prior art. But can we really expect one (government) organization to have deep experience in every field?

    • > It's the USPTO people who are missing this
      > experience to find prior art. But can we really
      > expect one (government) organization to have deep
      > experience in every field?

      That is _exactly_ what the USPTO is supposed to do: employ examiners expert in every field. They are also supposed to require them to thoroughly research every application.

      > There's something fundamentally wrong with the
      > idea of the USPTO.

      Yes, but this isn't it. Thirty years ago bullshit patents like this were not

      • Exactly. The problem is that worthless patents are being granted when both the law and prior practice say they should be denied.

        A public comment system that allowed challenges based upon a) prior art, b) obviousness or c) insufficient disclosure to implement the invention would do wonders to curtail abuse.

    • Re:Microsoft knew.. (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      If M$ knew, and didn't inform the PTO, that's called fraud on the Patent Office, for which 'da Gov can do very, very bad things to the inventor and to the counsel who filed the application. And, IAAL.

  • Remember Stacker?

    In fact, didn't they lose a patent lawsuit back in the early 90's over the disk/volume compression driver they included with DOS 6.0 or 6.2? It's been so long I don't remember the name, but IIRC they had to remove the patented algorithm in favor of a less efficient unencumbered alternative, change the name of the compression system and issue the changes as a DOS6.21 update release.

    Am I crazy or is there really no difference, and MS has fallen into some IP time-warp? What's next; pat
  • How is this different from zipping up files and accessing the zip like it's a folder/directory?
  • This sort of thing is starting to happen way too often.

    I'm wondering how long it will be before someone sues the patent office for issuing a dud patent and wasting everyone's time.

    Maybe that will stop the flow?

  • wish I could say I was suprised... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by josepha48 ( 13953 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @12:34PM (#6454052) Journal
    .. but I used to work at that office and had to get out to get away from the 'dumbing effect' it has on people. Not all people who work there are that dumb, but the problem is that they have quotas of how many actions they must perform a week. Each patent has 2 actions.

    First action is usually a rejection on something, but not always. Could be language / semantics, or something. Could also be peior art if the examiner finds any.

    The second action is then the final rejection or allowance. This needs to be based on the first action, so if the first action was a rejection on language then the second action is usually an allowance. If the first action was based on prior art and the art was good then it is usually a rejection. Most stuff is never black and white, there are some 65million colors that most patents fall into.

    If you go back and forth more than 2 times on any patent then you spin your wheels as a patent examiner, and don't get credit for a third or fourth action if you have to do more than 2 actions on a patent. Thus if you don't find anything in a period of time, then you have to allow it.

    As you get promoted in the patent office, you are expected to do MORE actions. So if you start out as a GS7 you have 4 actions about every 2 weeks. When you become a GS9 it is 5-1/2 actions about every two weeks. (GS is goverment job scale ratings. ) It was like that when I was there and I doubt it has changed much. The actual number of actions may not be 100% correct but it is close enough that anyone with an IQ smarter than a tomato plant can get the general idea.

  • http://www.theonion.com/onion3311/microsoftpatents .html

    Check out the link that someone posted in that IBM Mainframe thread!

    Paul B.
  • Well, it sounds more like Microsoft was intending to patent the "Alternate Data Stream" feature of the NTFS file system. You know, the whole a file called filename.txt:stream.txt is not the same as filename.txt:hidden.txt thing. Also, it's really nice that you can't see the newly created Alternate Data Stream (ADS) files. So using ADS it's a really nice way to hide stuff... even when running applications they will not show up as being a ADS executable (i.e. the executable will not be something like file
    • MacOS (HFS) had alternate file streams -- but hardcodded for 2 (resource fork and data fork) since 1985/86 or so. ProDOS (apple II computers) supported data/resource forks since the late 80s as well.

      MacOS allowed you to access the resurce fork with the same API as the data fork for read/write/open (you just specified it was the resource fork vs the data fork), but that was frowned upon -- there is a separate resouce manager that stored data in a structured format.

      BeOS (BFS) allowed for an arbitrary num

  • from the patent:

    The invention overcomes the limitations of the prior art by allowing applications and utilities to write several files to a disk as a single file-write operation, yet, after conversion, to individually access the several files.

    Ok, so I can download an iso image from my local FTP site (and get the bandwidth economy of downloading only one file) burn it to CD, and then I have access to all the individual files on that image.

    Another example is a program that typically maintains large data

  • [i]"To the amazement of readers of an IBM newsgroup, neither Microsoft nor the USPTO examiners seem to be aware of the existence of the Mainframe-based prior art, which is not cited in the patent."[/i]

    Duh, of course you don't include references to prior art in your patent application. What kind of idiot would do that? :D
    • Duh, of course you don't include references to prior art in your patent application. What kind of idiot would do that?

      Presumably an idiot that wanted to keep his/her patent. If a person was granted a patent without referencing prior art, all somebody has to do to challenge the patent is let the USPTO know about the prior art. The patent would be revoked. Remember the Y2K fix patent? Same fate.

  • It's not great news that the patent was issued, but it's not disaster either. If/when Microsoft tried to sue (Rieser? MacOSX? Take your pick) someone for infringing, then the patent is nullified by the courts.
    Just getting a patent issued to you doesn't mean the story is over.

    --

  • MS patented an API! (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Obviously, nobody here read or understood the patent. The idea is that it's slow to write lots of small files because the head is constantly seeking to the inode table, to the directory, to the data, etc.

    To see what this patent would do, make a 4MB file, and tar it up. Then make 1000 4KB files, and tar them up. The second file is a few percent bigger than the first one, right? Now untar the first file, and note how long it takes. Then untar the second file, and note how much longer it takes -- not just a f
    • Wether or not there is prior art doesnt really matter. Solving the problem you mention here is a trivial engineering problem, not an invention worth a patent. Any decent engineer could come up with several solutions to that problem in less than half an hour. I can think of at least three ways to do it off the top of my head.

      Of course, adding code complexity to solve a rare special case 'problem' like this, that already has a number of easy workarounds, would be a violation of the KISS principle and should
  • A few MSDN links that show Microsoft not only was aware of, but also supported the decades-old mainframe Partitioned Data Set (PDS) file structure in its product offerings...

    --> http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url = /library/en-us/his/htm/_sna_a.asp
    Microsoft Host Integration Server 2000
    Glossary
    data set members
    Members of partitioned data sets that are individually named elements of a larger file that can be retrieved by name.
    partitioned data set (PDS)
    A data set in direct access storage that
  • So if MS has a patent on this, WTF do I have to use PGP disk in order to get this functionality?
  • Based mostly on the replys I'd say the patent office isn't really checking patents very well and realisticly can not actually do a halfway decent job.

    This sets up a bad situation.
    So what is needed is a public/advocate review phase so the public can present publcly known prior art to the patent office before patents are issued and then have to go to cort with obveous prior art.

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