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Microsoft Patents 'IsNot', Enlists WTO
Milhouse102 writes "I was just reading an article on The Register about Microsoft's offshore patent war following Ballmer's recent outburst in Asia. I came across this little nugget, it seems MS has patented BASIC's IsNot operator."
I am going to patent "is too" and "nuh uh".
I hate sigs.
Unless I'm mistaken, they've only applied for a patent; it has not yet been granted. Sadly, given the state of the patent system nowadays, it would not surprise me if it is granted.
"You're older than you've ever been, and now you're even older."
After a quick read of the patent, it seems to say that it is a test to see if two "variables" are actually the same entity, i.e. at the same address.
That would seem to imply
#define IsNot(A,B) (&(A) != &(B))
infringes?
Surely this is done in things like memmove() to prevent overwriting of data?
If ever there were an example of how completely broken and useless the current patent system is then this is it. This makes you think, what other obvious and trivial functions have been granted patents? Can I get a patent on strcmp? I'll just apply for a patent on my new, special function that I just recently came up with. It's called StringCompare!
As I right this my colleagues are writing up patent applications for the !=, ==, &&, ||, &, and | operators. I expect these applications to be granted shortly, after which we'll own all your code and Microsoft will be my bitch.
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It depends on what your definition of "is" is...
Lemme guess. "I'm not an English major."
I believe you mean, "I IsNot an English major."
Actually, they specifically admit "Is" as prior art, the example they give is:
If (Not(A Is B)) Then (Goto Z) End If
By generating an IsNot operator, such that Not(A Is B)===(A IsNot B), you're re-ordering the sentance:
If (A IsNot B) Then (Goto Z) End If
That's what they're trying to patent. The use of a keyword rather than boolean logic. I rather hope and suspect this patent will fail for insufficient inventive step.
"Elmo knows where you live!" - The Simpsons
UK patent application GB0312175.3, someone already tried:
"The applicant appeared to be trying to protect the use of '0' and '1' in computer technology. [...] The applicant appeared to have completely misunderstood the patent system, and had not actually invented anything."
Via softwarepatents.co.uk. Well, at least *that* didn't get through. ARM's patent on the use of pointer arithmetic in CPU emulators *was* allowed, though.
"Elmo knows where you live!" - The Simpsons
First off, the IsNot operator is not part of VB 6.0 or VB.net 2003 (I haven't checked 2005, which is still in Beta)
Second, if you undestand VB's "Is" operator, IsNot makes more sense.
"Is" is a memory location comparison commonly used to see if two variables point to the same object, e.g. . It does not compare the values of the variables, only that they are pointers to the same object.
Because there is no inverse version of this operator like there is with "=" and "", you end up with non-natural-language statements such asMuch more natural looking isWhether this is patentable is another issue. But you can certainly patent a published idea -- it's the only way to protect it.
Design for Use, not Construction!
The dependent claims (2, 3 and 4) are merely shorthand to avoid writing the entire claim out each time, but for purposes of what they cover, you should read the claims like this:
"I have a porkchop, you have a porkchop. I have a veal, you have a veal".
http://www.panopticoncentral.net/archive/2003/11/1 7/243.aspx#Comments
And he writes that they "had requests for this in the past", so they did not even invent it, but some users suggested it.
Finally check out the comments of the VB users below wetting their pants for this little feature. Now isn't that really sad?
Signature deleted by lameness filter.
Microsoft's incredible insight here seems to involve taking Python's 10-year old technology, porting it to BASIC, and heavily optimizing it by removing the whitespace sytactic sugar between 'is' and 'not'. (This saves over 16% space!)
If anything was more worthy of patent protection, I don't know what it could be.
Actually, it's pretty obvious that the motivation for such a stupid little patent that applies to one language is simply to prevent people from reimplementing the language as a whole. Nobody cares about IsNot itself, including Microsoft. However, since 100% code compatibility is required to do a full reimplementation, this essentially would grant them a 20-year monopoly on compatible implementations of VB.
This is one of the worst things about the current patent system. Patent holders are allowed to use patents on small things to control access to huge things. Patents should somehow be changed to only protect the claims in the patent, they should not be allowed to use compatibility issues to amplify small patents into generalized barriers to entry of a whole industry.
Now, some claims refer to other claims... so, you can kill multiple claims by killing the underlying claim.
But, claim #1 says absolutely nothing about BASIC.
Also, when I read it, I get the impression that BASIC is mentions for demonstration purposes only, that the claim is for everything like BASIC.
For example, I see this:Which mentions derivitaves of BASIC and BASIC like languages. And, it mentions in one embodiment of the invention, the memory locations represent objects.. (Can you say dot net?)
Here is another part that makes me think it isn't just BASIC:Again, the mention of a browser and the web make me think of dot net.
Then, in paragraph [0041] we see this sentence:Which tags two non-BASIC languages (.net and delphi/pascal)
I think that if you read it closely you start getting the impression that they are trying to patent an idea that is expressed in many programming languages.
Not just an implementation in one language.
--Phillip
Can you say BIRTH TAX
probably a vi user. I bet his ESC key is worn out also.
No, but you should see his colon....
Never mind, forget I said that.
Well since IsNot is already patented, let me convert that to legal pseudo code:
Microsoft Windows = sux0r
Microsoft Inc = sux0r
MSN news = sux0r
Microsoft Hotmail = sux0r
Microsoft XBox = sux0r
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmar = pwn3d.