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Checksumming Webpages Patented

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the now-that-one-takes-the-cake dept.

Just when you thought nothing else stupid could be patented, Wahfuz noted a story running about a company called Pumatech who has apparently patented storing a checksum of a webpage to determine if it has updated or not. I guess from now on everyone who wants to detect changes in web pages will need to store full copies of the pages in question, because I'm sure nobody thought of anything so complex as piping it through md5 and saving the output.

8 of 234 comments (clear)

  1. Uhh... ok.. by jCaT · · Score: 3

    I'm sure nobody thought of anything so complex as piping it through md5 and saving the output.

    Yeah- this is one of those "Why didn't I think of that?" things- but I have yet to hear of a web cache or proxy that uses md5sums instead of last-modified headers- are there any out there? And if so, wouldn't that count as the all-important prior art?

    Just because something seems simple once somebody else thought of it doesn't mean it wasn't a good idea in the first place.

    1. Re:Uhh... ok.. by kijiki · · Score: 5

      You couldn't be more wrong.

      January 1997 -- rfc2068 HTTP/1.1

      See section 14.20, 14.25, 14.26, and 14.43.

      It describes the "ETag: " header, which is usually a md5 hash of the resource.

      The client can then validate the resources in its cache by sending a request with a "If-None-Match: " header with the ETag associated with the copy in its cache.

      The server will either respond "Not modified" in which case the client simply uses the version in its cache, or the server will resend the resource if the ETags don't match.

      Since this patent was filed for in 1999, this is pretty clear prior art, in the most commonly used protocol on the largest network in the world. If the patent office can't locate prior art in incredibly obvious (obvious to anyone skilled in the art, that is) cases like this one, what hope do we have for them intelligently handling more subtle cases?

  2. You think that's bad.... by Francis · · Score: 5

    I used to work at Pumatech. (Actually, I worked in the wireless web-browsing end of things, as an engineeer)

    Anyways, we were checking our emails one day (this was about 6 months ago) and there's some big "congratulations" email - we got another pattent!

    A large portion of the company is based out of synchronization software. (Synchronize your PIM, Laptop, whatever) We'd just received a patent on a revolutionary new technique - time based syncing! Sync data, based on their TIME STAMPS!

    We had a good laugh.


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    #include <malloc.h>
    free(your.mind);
  3. Anything obvious is unpatentable. by Christopher+Thomas · · Score: 3

    Just because something seems simple once somebody else thought of it doesn't mean it wasn't a good idea in the first place.

    And just because they (allegedly) were the first to think of it, doesn't mean it's patentable.

    Patents are supposed to be given only for things that aren't "obvious to anyone skilled in the art". In practice, this isn't assessed well by the patent office, but that's another can of worms.

  4. Prior art in the HTTP Protocol? by Carnage4Life · · Score: 3

    Isn't this just doing stuff similar to what strong validators a là Entity Tags in HTTP requests and responses use for determining whether a page has been changed (i.e. is in the cache) or not?

    The only difference I can see is that they generate an Etag like entity for tect highlighted by the user as well as the entire webpage. Doesn't seem worthy of a patent though.

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  5. Er ... no ... by Chillas · · Score: 3

    Ahem ... no, they have patented a system for creating, storing, and using the checksum. An entire system, not just the storage of a checksum. Once again, alarmist headlines from /. I think we'd all appreciate it if these stories had accurate headlines.

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    --- Math illiteracy affects 8 out of every 5 people.
  6. New business model in the New Economy by Xibby · · Score: 4

    If you patenet it, they will come.

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    I'm going to go back in my box and will think within the limits of my box: MS Sucks Linux Good I read too much Slashdot.
  7. Patents become irrelevant by MrNovember · · Score: 3
    When laws such as copyright and patent become misused in idiotic ways, the masses will simply ignore them in what amounts to large scale civil disobedience.

    The danger of patents like these is not, IMHO, that someone is going to ask you to pay a license fee for your two line Perl program that uses checksumming but that when you really invent something original and worthwhile, patent protection will have been rendered meaningless by people simply ignoring it.