USPTO Issues Microsoft A Patent For 60's Technology

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."

Comments

Reiser FS

[phnx90]

Doesnt Reiser FS 4 also have this feature.

Next patent

[Baikala]

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

the 60's

[jpsst34]

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.

Can This Actually Be Patented?

[ratboy666]

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.

Re:Of course MS is aware of prior art...

[Asprin]

Yup, I'm right. MS's DoubleSpace infringed on sisk compression patents held by Stac, Inc.

To wit:

Here is Stac's original complaint
One guy's opinion
Wikipedia entry (scroll down a ways to 1993)
I should just let you Google these yourself.

So, clearly filesystems like MS is describing have not only been around since before 2000, but MS lost lawsuits over them 10 years ago! THAT'S JUST ONE EXAMPLE!

wish I could say I was suprised...

[josepha48]

.. 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.