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USPTO Issues Microsoft A Patent For 60's Technology

Posted by timothy on 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."

5 of 53 comments (clear)

  1. Loopback?? by linuxwrangler · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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

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    "You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
  2. wish I could say I was suprised... by josepha48 · · Score: 4, Interesting
    .. 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.

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    Only 'flamers' flame!
    Does slashdot hate my posts?

  3. Think they are talking NTFS Alternate Data Streams by asdkrht · · Score: 2, Interesting
    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 filename.txt and not filename.txt:foo.exe).

    An example is shown here HOWTO: Use NTFS Alternate Data Streams

    I'm not sure if a similar feature existed in prior OS or not, since I'm not familiar with the mainframe OSs of long ago, but, I think this feature has been a part of the NTFS file system since NT 3.1

    Of course, the whole NTFS Alternate Data Stream (ADS) thing can be evil if it is misused. I mean you cant see ADS using DIR or Windows Explorer.

  4. Re:Microsoft knew.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

  5. MS patented an API! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    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 few percent longer, but orders of magnitude longer.

    Ideally, tar would just:
    1. allocate and write 4MB of data
    2. write 1000 inodes
    3. make 1000 directory entries

    However, tar has to do this:
    1. allocate and write 4KB of data
    2. write 1 inode
    3. make 1 directory entry
    4. repeat 1000 times!

    Microsoft is patenting a way (an API, essentially) to allow tar to do the Right Thing in that situation. This operation could also solve speed issues with GConf.

    While there are many similar things, no OS has an API that does this, right? Therefore, there is no prior art.