Microsoft's 'IsNot' Patent Continued...

An anonymous reader writes " According to the patent application--filed in mid-November by Paul Vick, lead architect for Visual Basic .Net at Microsoft; Amanda Silver, a program manager on the Visual Basic team; and an individual in Bellevue, Wash., named Costica Barsan--the IsNot operator is described as a single operator that allows a comparison of two variables to determine if the two point to the same location in memory." This article continues the tale started last november, and here is an eWeek story on the same subject.

Comments

Oh please!

[BWJones]

the IsNot operator is described as a single operator that allows a comparison of two variables to determine if the two point to the same location in memory.

Oh please. I remember our programming instructor in sixth grade teaching us about this logic operator is BASIC. This is simply an effort (albeit transparent) for Microsoft to continue to duplicate pre-existing code for Microsoft specific code to ensure that programs written with Microsoft specific tools will maintain future market share for the company. In other words, the creation of a Microsoft specific "equals" means that code years down the road will require Microsoft specific tools to edit/change/run this code. I call shenanigans! This is not innovation in any technical sense and indeed is not even innovation in a business sense.

Re:Oh please!

[luvirini]

But it application of a basic law of monopolies: Lock in customers.

Re:Oh please!

[ravenspear]

This is not innovation in any technical sense and indeed is not even innovation in a business sense.

On the contrary, it seems that being able to slip surious patents through the system is an important business skill these days. If something isn't done to clean up the USPTO it might even become an essential skill for any business's survival.

Re:Oh please!

[luvirini]

The business plan of this decade:
1) Find something that is well known and patent it.
2) Sue some big company for using your patent.

Re:Oh please!

[BradleyUffner]

"IsNot" is different from "Not equal to"

Re:Oh please!

[ArsenneLupin]

"IsNot" is different from "Not equal to"

But it is the same as "Not equal to" applied to the address of the variable:

a isNot b
is equivalent to:
&a != &b

So, it's still a pretty trivial concept...

Re:Oh please!

[Richard W.M. Jones]

The business plan of this decade:
1) Find something that is well known and patent it.
2) Sue some big company for using your patent.

Actually, the business plan for several decades has been:

1. Get a patent of dubious merit.
2. Find lots and lots of companies who are too small to defend themselves, but large enough to pay out a few thousand $$, and send them a demand for royalties.
3. Profit.

See Patent Nonsense for an example of how this happened to Autodesk just before they went public.

Rich.

Re:Oh please!

[Vicegrip]

I'm willing to guess that the reason Microsoft doesn't have to actually take anyone to court is that a cease-and-desist letter from a company with enough cash to sue your company, your board, your friends, your children and all your future generations without blinking even a little bit at the cost is sufficient to scare the bejezuus outta most people.

Ask the Virtual Dub guy what he did when he got his cease-and-desist letter in the mail from Microsoft.

Ridiculous IP claims have been the death of SCO...

[bigtallmofo]

...Ridiculous IP claims will be the death of Microsoft.

When they're resorting to patenting what appear to me to be boolean operations with an object-oriented twist, that's a bad sign about what real plans the company doesn't have.

I don't see...

[xbrownx]

...why any rational company would actually be afraid of this.

People didn't take the hyperlinking patent seriously did they?

Feh, meh and other sheep noises

[Willeh]

I'm not much of a BASIC programmer, but i fail to see how this would seriously worry the people that make RealBasic. If they don't want to see the patented operator in their language, then I'm guessing neither willmost of the other BASIC vendors. Hence, Microsoft will have built another one of their famous Islands (word macro language, implementations of various standards in IE being other islands) that won't be so easy to turn into a Continent (the dominance of IE in the browser market) of Vendor Lock-in.

And thus Microsoft will have another patent paper to toss onto the pile like so many unwanted gelatine Desserts.

I'm all for it!

[Weaselmancer]

Go IsNot patent, go!

The sooner the industry is choked with these obvious lock-out bullshit patents, the sooner development will grind to a total stop for fear of litigation. And as soon as that happens, the system will have to be reformed.

Well, either that or we all give up tech completely and be farmers. It's in the court's hands now.

For all the people complaining..

[phuturephunk]

It is up to YOU the people to elect at least half-way savvy human beings who can change the system. Whining about it on /. isn't going to solve shit. For all the complaining that geek types do, I see scant few of us actually organizing and trying to make a difference.

Do I think Microsoft should be able to patent this? Absolutely not, because I don't believe the basic core functions of the computer should be patentable. Now taking those functions and tying them together into a cohesive program should definitely be copyrightable, but patenting a computer adding two numbers together (This will happen eventually, I'll bet a C note on it) is ridiculus.

Re:Ridiculous IP claims have been the death of SCO

[mrtrumbe]

I disagree.

I think SCO had been in decline for years before resorting to frivolous IP claims. It seems to me that their business model (sell a mediocre version of Unix on highly specialized machines to retailers) wasn't working well, their profits sank and they saw the writing on the wall. In comes a new CEO known for pushing IP litigation and *bang* they have a new business model overnight.

MS is in a different place. I think they will probably go into decline eventually, but they have a long way to go before their business model fails the way SCO's did.

Taft

What about Europe?

[argent]

Hold on, if Microsoft is just developing a patent arsenal in case someone else uses software patents against them, how come thay're pushing so hard for software patents in Europe? If this is just a matter of defense, Bill Gates should be asking European ministers to oppose the software patent process, not twisting their arms to push it through against the will of the European Parliament.

What am I missing?

hear, hear!

[shis-ka-bob]

I think that this is one of several patent applications for software that should be used to shame the patent office and the corporations that apply for software patents on other people's work. Consider US Patent 6,775,781, with was filed by Microsoft on August 10, 2004. From the abstract:

A computer such as a network appliance executes an administrative security process configured to run under an administrative privilege level. Having an administrative privilege level, the administrative security process can initiate administrative functions in an operating system function library. A user process executing under a non-administrative privilege level can initiate a particular administrative function that the process would not otherwise be able to initiate by requesting that the administrative security process initiate the function. In response to a request to initiate a particular function from a process with a non-administrative privilege level, the administrative security process determines whether the requesting process is authorized to initiate the particular administrative function based on information accessed in a data store. If the requesting process is authorized, the administrative security process initiates the particular administrative function. In this manner, the administrative security process facilitates access to specific administrative functions for a user process having a privilege level that does not permit the user process to access the administrative functions.

This is a patent on their 'runas' command. But how is this different from the 'sudo' command that has been present on Unix-like systems since 1986. ( See http://www.courtesan.com/sudo/history.html for a history of sudo.) How dare Microsoft so blatantly steal the work of others, in this case the work of Bob Coggeshall, Cliff Spencer, Garth Snyder, Bob Manchek, Trent Hein and Todd Miller. Hypocracy must be opposed, it is immoral. This is not only 'money gurbbing' at its worst, it amount to a theft of other people's work. We must all complain loudly and often to our elected officials.

Re:Python

[snorklewacker]

Python's 'is' operator tests the address. As does its 'is not' operator (it's distinct from "x is (not y)", a mostly meaningless op). No law says you can't have a two-token operator.

Maybe part of Microsoft's patent is spelling it with studlyCaps.

Re:Now look here...

[rben]

Unfortunately, the USPTO seems to have a large rubber approve stamp to use on all MS patent applications. Microsoft has already receieved several patents of dubious merit, many of which have been talked about here in the past.

People are still getting too caught up on the wrong thing. The problem isn't even what MS is getting a patent on. The problem is a system that allows anyone to patent software at all. Software is already protected by copyright, it had no need for patent protection as well. By allowing people to patent software, we are shooting ourselves in the foot. Innovation will grind to a halt. Who wants to spend years reviewing a large program for potential patent violations? The only companies that will be able to write software will be those that have obtained cross-licensing agreements with one another. In other words, the big companies like MS and IBM. The day of the small programming shop are numbered.

Very few companies innovate. Most have climates that stifle innovation rather than encourage it. Large companies are good at buying up small companies that have made innovations and then turning those innovations into money makers.

If we eliminate the small start ups that are responsible for the majority of innovations in our country, we will be giving away even more of our jobs to other countries who have more rational approaches to intellectual property protection.

In the event we manage to force everyone to acknowledge and enforce software patents throughout the world, we'll slow the pace of innovation in technology at a time when it is needed more than ever.

Re:Now look here...

[glesga_kiss]

Innovation will grind to a halt. Who wants to spend years reviewing a large program for potential patent violations? The only companies that will be able to write software will be those that have obtained cross-licensing agreements with one another. In other words, the big companies like MS and IBM.

Speak for yourself mate. This is a US only problem, it's not affecting the rest of us. What's happening is US inovation is speeding up on it's continual decline. Been that way for about 10 years I'd say, and the legal aspect has been a huge part of it. Come up with something new that replaces X? Get sued by the makers of X. When was the last time you heard of the latest gadget coming from the US? Or the take up of some new technology? Broadband was the last big US-led inovation I can think of, other than the segway. In terms of mobile phones, the US is about 3 years behind the UK, and we tail Japan by another year. Television; we'll we've had digital widescreen for about five years, with interactive programming for 3 of them and now recently video on demand (real, with pause controls etc). Over on your side of the pond you are still debating broadcast-flags and the like! You can't do that to innovation, it's not innovative. Someone WILL come along and beat you to it. For example, BitTorrent and RSS is so much more elegant than over-the-air broadcasting, and it threatens to replace TV altogether. Where will the broadcast flag be then? And all the wavelengths auctioned off at high prices? Some one needs to pull their head out the sand quicktime!

The US is going to feel the pain from this for a long time. It's in the finacial shitter and it's digging a deeper hole for itself with each new corporate bought law. A lot of finacial experts believe that this is a large influnce on the "nation building" as they call it. While the war is a cost on the tax payer, it's incredibly good business and the spoils will filter down the economy and give it a kick start. But the world has gotten more complex, with more communication between everyone. You can't just go around starting wars everytime the moneys tight anymore. People start to boycot your products; they refuse to go to your country and you do lose out. It's a PR nightmare.

But that's thing nowadays. Countries mean squat. No one wants to be king or president. You get far more power and pay in business and it's far more obtainable. What the US government doesn't realise is that corporations can only be depended on to do one thing; whatever is in their own best interests. There will come a time when those businesses decide to move elsewhere, as that will be in their best interest. They hold no loyalty to the state. And when those rats leave the ship, there isn't going to be much left.