Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Patents Your Local Weather Report
theodp writes "After a seven year wait, Microsoft was granted a patent Tuesday for the Customization of network documents by accessing customization information on a server computer using unique user identifiers, patent lawyer-speak for using preferences stored on a server for such purposes as "displaying stock quotes for the companies in which the user is interested, and displaying the user's local weather report.""
Nothing like a story involving Microsoft to bring out the haters. Nothing like patents to bring out the righteous indignance. The problem is, most Slashdot readers don't know much of the law behind patents, how they're written, and how they're challenged. Largely, they think if a patent claims something, and the patent is approved, then the claim has force of law.
The fact of the matter is, patents are structured with a series of claims, as you can see in the linked article. Claims are the only thing with meaning in a patent. The rest is provided for reference, clarification, and simple defence. So the only thing of true importance in this document are the claims, near the top.
Secondly, wildly broad claims normally start, and increasingly narrow claims are made as one works down the ordered list. Therefore, the first thing you claim is going to be ridiculously broad. Generally speaking, the first few claims in a patent are not serious attempts to patent something. The last few claims are the ones of importance. And, what do you know, the title of the patent is...the first claim. So before anyone flames Microsoft, have you read claims 11-20? Oh, there's still plenty to complain about, but not as much as the article writer implies.
You like splinters in your crotch? -Jon Caldara
Screw the weather report or stock quotes. The language of the patent describes also offline message retrieval via POP3 protocol.
;)
American patent system is scary stuff...
Robert
Bastard Operator From 193.219.28.162
As a matter of fact, engineers are encouraged *not* to do a patent search. Having seen the patents that you'll probably infringe on anyway just proves intent, making the penalties worse. It's much better to infringe by accident.
main(O){10<putchar((O--,102-((O&4)*16| (31&60>>5*(O&3)))))&&main(2+ O);}
LN2 is cool!
Because, in so far as the current process works, 'prior art' can only consist of previously approved patents.
... who, generally speaking, have all the money and the lawyers they need to file for patents as often as they like.
IE, the US patent system is truely a 'first to file' patent system. Patents will generally be approved even if somebody can demonstrate that they had 'prior art' but failed to patent it.
It's a nice way of facilitating an extra advantage to the markets' status-quo leaders
"Old man yells at systemd"
You are WRONG. The fact that you speak in a pompous, know-it-all way makes your comment laughable. Prior art is not about patents. It is about prior implementation of the patent. Please refrain from talking out of your ass from now on, thank you very much.
it looks like the same patent examiner also granted them a patent on web services yesterday.
patent 6,632,249
who is stephen s. hong?
I just read the claims in the patent. This is completely outrageous.
In a nutshell, it covers the universal mechanism of delivering user-specific dynamic web content: tag the user with a unique ID (usually by way of a cookie), then use this ID as a lookup key into a database where user-specific settings reside (which the user provided at some earlier point by submitting an HTML form), then deliver HTML pages that are customized based on the stored user information (e.g. "This page was generated by a Barrel of Attack Elephants for cdunworth.")
If this patent is enforceable, nearly every single web application ever written would be subject to it. Your online bank uses this mechanism. Slashdot uses this mechanism. Amazon uses this mechanism.
There must be prior art to invalidate this. Aren't there any software developers that work at the patent office???
I would also like to dispel the myth of the OSS developer as one who sits around and has nothing better to do than code. I am an OSS developer, but I have a wife and kid. They need food, clothes, and all those other not-so-extravagent things. To support that expensive habit of living, I have a full time job, get this, supporting OSS software.
That's right, I'm paid to maintain a bunch of Linux servers. There are some Microsoft servers too, but they pay at least my salary in support fees for the 3 packages they run. Judging by the "on hold" time I spend waiting for Tech support, they aren't employing a whole lot of people.
I do some work on the side. Some volunteer work, some paid. All of it uses OSS software to do something useful on a budget. Those budgets are generally just enough to pay me to write the software, and not a whole lot more for licenses or extravegant hardware. If I didn't have the advantages of OSS, the projects would never have existed because there is no market.
So you see, OSS has created at least 1 job, and a wonderful side income for me. But I don't get paid for the software. I get paid (or when volunteering, recognized) for SUPPORTING the software.
Giving the software the results away avoids a whole raft of sticky intellectual property issues. Since my clients know that everything I write will be published they don't feel like I'm hording property developed for THEM. I don't feel like I'm being and intellectual prostitute.
My software is like the collection of techniques a carpenter developes while making furnature. By itself useless, but in skilled hands it can produce usefull things.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
I did, and I noticed the following in Claim 1:
Now correct me if I'm wrong, but when you access the "server computer" using HTTP for the first time, you're typically given a default page. If you click on a "customize this page" link, then you can customize away. However, that is a different page, and hence, a second access, according to HTTP. Claim 1 wouldn't apply, and so none of the other claims would. (I may be wrong because there are keepalives, etc.)
> get tea
No Tea: dropped.
Disclaimer: IANAL, this is not a legal advice, I don't know what I'm talking about, you are on your own, talk to your lawyer, etc. etc. etc.
Here's how I see that it may not apply to all websites: if a website asks user to create a username and password (an account on the website) and customize that account, this patent may not apply. From the patent text, claim 1:
during first accessing of a server computer on the network by each user client computer, obtaining customization information from the corresponding user, assigning to the customization information a unique user identifier corresponding to the user, storing the customization information in association with the unique user identifier on the server computer, and returning the unique user identifier to the client computer; [emphasis mine]
This seems to claim that the server will create and assign a unique ID to each user customization submission and then returning it to the client. This would be different from a process where a user requests that a particular ID be assigned instead - where user creates the ID. i.e., if you use cookies to store server-assigned hashes to identify repeat users you are violating; but if you use cookies to store the actual user ID that was originally created by the user him/herself then you may be clear. That's how I see it anyway.
But the patent itself, it's clear, was filed after Microsoft had "discovered" the Internet - Dec. 1996. Surely, there must be quite a few examples of prior art to this. I remember sites running registration-based content at about that time, but specific sites and related timeline are kind of messed up in my mind.