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Canadian Company Claims RDF Patent

Posted by timothy on from the patenting dept.

quinticent writes: "Looks like they are at it again. Companies seem to like to let a standard become, well, standard before pulling out the lawyers to claim they own a patent on it. Now some Canadian company is claiming they own a US patent on RDF (doesn't Slashdot use RDF?). When will the US government realize that allowing patents on common ideas is just wrong? The CNet article is here."

11 of 188 comments (clear)

  1. Yep, slashdot has it by Cheetah86 · · Score: 5, Informative

    (doesn't Slashdot use RDF?)

    Here it is.

    1. Re:Yep, slashdot has it by Alsee · · Score: 5, Informative
      I do not want to sound stupid, but here it is anyway. What is RDF?

      Resource Description Framework

      Here's a link to the W3C standards site about it.

      1. The Resource Description Framework (RDF) integrates a variety of applications from library catalogs and world-wide directories to syndication and aggregation of news, software, and content to personal collections of music, photos, and events using XML as an interchange syntax.


      I don't know squat about RDF, but it sounds like a list of what kind of stuff is available on a website.

      Slashdot.RDF looks like directions to the main page, the motto (News for nerds, stuff that matters), the logo, the most recent stories, and the search page.

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      - - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
  2. Endo-Dynamic by adamy · · Score: 5, Informative

    They sure love that word.

    As endo means inner and Dynamic means changing, I guess they are sayinga an internally reconfigurable system.Or a system that can react without external interference. Sounds like anything that is based on
    an interpreter/parser to me...but anyway

    (a) generating an information structure and relationship in the memory of the computer as one or more Endo-Dynamic Sets (EDS), the EDS comprising a list of one or more Endo-Dynamic Information Nodes (EDINs), the EDINs each representing an atomic component of data, and the EDINs each comprising a subject identifier, an attribute identifier, and a bond identifier, wherein the bond identifier defines a relationship between the subject and attribute identifiers;

    OK, we got a two objects, and a relationship between them. Hashtable, anyone?

    Maybe there is some subtlety hidden in all that gibberish. I am a programmer, and I have trouble reading it, I feel sorry for the poor bloke at the patent office that had to struggle through it...assuming one did.

    I realize that most computer programs, converted to english, would probably translate as well as that one did. Wopuldn't it be eiser if they just tried to patent their original source code.

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    Open Source Identity Management: FreeIPA.org
    1. Re:Endo-Dynamic by XBL · · Score: 3, Informative

      Well, after reading this comment, and really looking at what they wrote, I am beginning to agree with their claim somewhat that what their patent is actually RDF...

      In RDF, the relationship would be a URI (typically represented in URL format). The two objects are called Resources. This is the "bond identifier" they speak of.

      A Resource "subject identifier" can be an object that contains some fields, "attribute identifiers" with references to other resources, a collection of elements, or a literal that contains actual data.

    2. Re:Endo-Dynamic by Shadowin · · Score: 2, Informative

      Wopuldn't it be eiser if they just tried to patent their original source code.

      Because you copyright sourcecode. That would be the same as patenting a book. Instead, you patent the process. I'm amazed there hasn't been an author (such as Steven King) patent his/her story-making process.

  3. Re:WTF is RDF? by rebug · · Score: 3, Informative

    http://www.w3.org/RDF/

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    there's more than one way to do me.
  4. RDF vs RSS by burtonator · · Score: 5, Informative

    Slashdot does not use RDF.

    What you are thinking of is the slashdot RSS feed.

    This is not true RDF. This is actually Rich Site Summary.

    Early in the development of RSS there was a slight intermingling with RDF.

    The only current remant is the shared RDF namespace that RSS 1.0 uses. Slashdot uses RSS 0.9 so I can understand the confusion.

    True RDF is REALLY cool and I hope this patent gets knocked back to /dev/null where it belongs. RDF can be used to create very complex graphs which computer systems can understand.

    We are working on a distributed Reputation system and RDF graphs will probably play a major role.

    Also. If you are interested in doing some cool stuff with RSS I would recommend checking out Reptile

    Kevin

  5. Re:Can someone tell me what this means? by XBL · · Score: 4, Informative

    Well, I suppose that *MAYBE* this could be interpreted as an RDF triple.

    bond identifier == URI
    endo-dynamic information node == a Resource

  6. this patent by Syre · · Score: 3, Informative

    This patent is so general that it could 'protect' any mark-up language or indeed any hash or indexed data structure.

    IMHO it's clearly invalid.

    If you look at what they say below, they are describing a hash or indexed data structure in memory in their first claim. There is clearly prior art which invalidates this claim. This patent is bunk:

    ---------

    1. A method for dynamically organizing and processing data in a computer having a memory and a data storage device coupled thereto, the method comprising the steps of:

    (a) generating an information structure and relationship in the memory of the computer as one or more Endo-Dynamic Sets (EDS), the EDS comprising a list of one or more Endo-Dynamic Information Nodes (EDINs), the EDINs each representing an atomic component of data, and the EDINs each comprising a subject identifier, an attribute identifier, and a bond identifier, wherein the bond identifier defines a relationship between the subject and attribute identifiers;

    (b) associating each bond identifier of an EDIN with an organizational structure of data stored in the memory of the computer; and

    (c) traversing the organizational structure of data in the memory of the computer through the EDINs.

  7. Re:Common Idea? by DonnarsHmr · · Score: 4, Informative

    The deficency in the US Patent system isn't one of "common ideas". As has been mentioned, tires, computers, and many other things are all "common ideas". The problem is patenting *general* ideas. It's reasonable to patent a specific solution to the problem of getting to work (say, each of the parts in a Ford Explorer). It is *unreasonable* to allow a patent on the idea of using internal combustion to move people around. It is also reasonable to patent processes like a specific method of refining crude oil into gasoline. However, the Patent Office would never patent the *idea* of turing crude oil into gasoline. The breakdown of the US patent system came when it was extended into intellectual property and CS concepts. The Office has not drawn a distinction between a specific algorhythm and an idea that encompasses an entire range of solutions.

  8. Prior Art - William Kent Data & Reality by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    A related system that should constitute prior art was describe in 1979 in a book called _Data & Reality_ by William "Bill" Kent in a system he called ROSE (Relations Objects Strings Entities). Excerpts at: http://home.earthlink.net/~billkent/Doc/darxrp.htm The proposal is also similar to Entity-Relationship database concepts by Chen and others, see: Chen, P.P. The Entity relational model - Towards a Unified View of Data. ACM Transaction on Database Systems. Vol. 1, No 1, 1976, pp 9-36.