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LSI Patents the Doubly-Linked List

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the all-your-b-trees-are-belong-to-me dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Back in April, LSI was granted patent number 7028023. This is a patent on a stunning new technique in data structures ... the concept that a linked list can in fact have multiple orderings. Of course, this has been used since the beginning of (computer) time in the form of doubly-linked lists. Even if LSI wants to (somehow) claim that the doubly-linked list doesn't count as prior art, maintaining linked lists of graphical objects sorted by both x and y co-ordinates for collision detection has been done since "graphical objects" meant ASCII characters on a green-on-black screen, and has probably been widespread in databases for probably even longer."

3 of 328 comments (clear)

  1. Patent reform anyone? by sinij · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Patents do not have to be meaningful, or even have a remote chance of standing up in court. They are weapons in corporate world and you use them mostly to cause damage. If your public company is sued you lose money in legal fees, might lose investor confidence in a critical moment and overall end up in a loss even if you easily won it. Just look at Research In Motion if you need to see how much damage can frivolous patent deal.

  2. Re:OK, this is just ridiculous. by Kuciwalker · · Score: 5, Insightful
    You know, it's up to the oil company to make sure that no one gets their hands on the software, just like Coca Cola makes sure no one finds out about the "secret formula".

    And thus, the company never publishes the things they discovered and society has to keep reinventing them, since everyone who discovers them keeps them secret. Whereas with patents, the company gets a monopoly on that particular thing for 20 years and then society is free to use it for eternity. What you propose just results is massive duplication of research.

  3. Re:OK, this is just ridiculous. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Patents, therefore, are a tradeoff. They protect the inventor while encouraging them to disclose their techniques. Thus, the inventor gets something (a government protected monopoly for a limited period), and society gets something (access to the details of the technology).

    The problem is that for almost all software patents, a monopoly is being granted for details we did not actually need to know, because they are obvious to anyone 'skilled in the art'. Or even 'unskilled in the finger daubing'. The value of the monopoly is much, much, greater than the value of the information we're getting.

    I'd venture that this is true not just of software patents, but in software, the progress made in the absence of a patent regime for so many years spoke volumes about the lack of a need for patent protection.