Slashdot Mirror
Linked List Patented in 2006
An anonymous reader writes "Congratulations are in order to Ming-Jen Wang of LSI Logic Corporation who, in patent #10260471 managed to invent the linked list. From the abstract, "A computerized list is provided with auxiliary pointers for traversing the list in different sequences. One or more auxiliary pointers enable a fast, sequential traversal of the list with a minimum of computational time. Such lists may be used in any application where lists may be reordered for various purposes." Good-bye doubly linked list. We should also give praise to the extensive patent review performed by Cochran Freund & Young LLP."
I would show the prior art, but I can't read the reel-to-reel tapes.
"No matter where you go, there you are." -- Buckaroo Banzai
what a genius. he deserves millions over millions for that. and chicks for free.
People are immediatly shouting "prior art!" I don't care about prior art as much as I care about the fact that it's another software patent and unworthy of being patented.
I read the claims... somebody submit a patent for insertion and deletion operations.
The US patent office has proved its incompetence in this area time and time again.
If you must have software patents, why not a specialist software patent office to deal with them?
If you RTFP, what's actually being patented is the idea of using multiple pointers so that the same item can be in more than one linked list at a time. This idea is also a long way from being novel, but it's slightly different from patenting the linked list. Arguably a doubly-linked list is prior art...
Xenu loves you!
OK, so where do I go to submit prior art?
I've got personal programming I've done that uses linked lists. I've got an instructor who's been teaching them in a 200-level C++ course for god knows how long. Hell, Herb Schildt's "C++: The Complete Reference" was published before this patent was filed in 2002.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
thats not a reference, thats a pointer!!
;)
*smack*
Go back to Algorithms and Data Structures, Do not pass go, Do no increment the Counter by 200
$_="Slashdotter";$syn="OTT";s;..;;;sub _{print shift||$_};s!ash!Perl !;s=$syn=ack=i;tr+LLEd+BLAH+;_"Just Another ";_
These, were the examiners. I wonder what it takes to be an examiner, surely you must have a little knowledge in that particular area?
Do they get a bonus at the end of the week, for the number of patents they have past.
What he actually invented was a linked list with two or three pointers, an therefore sort orders, in the same list. Doubly linked lists demonstrate his concept, though are more complicated (since they allow backwards traversals of the same list) and useful.
What am I doing this morning? Why, furiously working on my patent on all types of sort! First year Computer Science students will BOW to my will (assuming they want to pass that radix sort assignment!)! Muwhahahaha!
I read about this technique about 23 years ago. What is going on here? This looks like material for a slashdot poll, viz:-
Why do you think that the latest LSI is bogus?
What about it, guys?
--E.
I've got so much code modifying to do.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
People are immediatly shouting "prior art!" I don't care about prior art as much as I care about the fact that it's another software patent and unworthy of being patented.
I have yet to hear a convincing argument why Babbage's engine, which uses physical mechanical gears to implement an algorithm, is inherently more patentable than the same algorithm in software. How about if I use an FPGA instead? Is it patentable then?
I realize that software has seen more bad patents than it should, but that suggests that the system should be cleaned up, not tossed. And software patents aren't nearly as bad as the nebulous "business model" patents or "natural discovery" patents.
Note that the worst offender usually offered up as the problem child of software patents - "one-click" - was not a software patent, rather a business model patent.
The patent # is actually 7028023. The summary quoted number is the application number. Also, this is OLD, issued almost a full year ago. I actually think we had an argument about this long before now. I am starting to wonder if some of these anonymous submissions for these are actually coming from examiners with a clue. (Trust me there are some.) And look, I found it.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
The same patent was mentioned in this Slashdot article. What is new since then?
Then LSI would sue and say they implicitly covered that and you'd counter sue for prior art, and that patent office wouldn't care either way. Now if every time someone challenged an approved patent for prior art or that it conflicts with an existing patent, the patent office had to put up the defense in court and spend the money, then things might change. They were the ones that said it was novel, let them defend their decision.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
Look here
0 0.misc/msg/205bb134a5ab9982
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/comp.sys.ibm.as4
What I describe, doccumented on the usenet, Is a multple linked list. I dont claim that I invented this method by any means - I'm sure someone must have come up with this b4 me as it is the next logical progression from a single linked list. BUT, At least I posted the method on the internet way back then, so prior art can definatly be proven.
You are all suffering from hindsight bias, you all think you've used linked and double links and n-linked lists before but in reality you were using vectors and this is a genuine innovation. ;)
c tions_Rapporteur_fails_to_protect_European_industr y
Here in the EU, JURI is trying to criminalize all IP infringements again:
http://press.ffii.org/Press_releases/Criminal_San
The vote is expected 20th March (tomorrow) with the aim of making minor copyright, trademark and patent infringement into a criminal offense. There is no fair use in Europe either.
This has little to do with the real world, EU has no jurisdiction in European criminal law, but if it can make a trade issue into a criminal law issue it can expand EU control in that direction. So JURI has cooked up this trick whereby IP rights are claimed as a trade issue and pumped it up to claim infringement needs criminal prosecutions.
You've still got it wrong. It's an abstracted class.
You cannot dereference the pointer; that's impossible. You must first realize that there is no pointer, and that you're only dereferencing yourself.
110100 1101000 1101000 1100110 0 1101111 1101000 1100011 1
Another perfectly good /. 2007/04/01 post wasted.
If Hemos had waited there would have been some real funny comments from all US and EU.
If Ming-Jen Wang and LSI Logic Corporation had waited to file, then the date would
have clued US and EU all in on the tasteless joke of the few, on the many of US and EU.
DAMN, Hemos "PLEASE" next time save it for April 1,
because IPR/PO are so dang dumb-funny, we could all
be brought to tears and have a good cynical laugh.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com/iip/complaint s.htm
Complaints should be mailed to the following address:
Mail Stop 24
Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
P.O. Box 1450
Alexandria, VA 22313-1450
Prior art for this story.
Texture mapping.
How about slocate?
Or rsync?
Oh and data muxing.
Fantastic!
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
I think this is a global conspiracy to undermine the patent system by submitting totally invalid patents. Once it's found they're unenforcable they'll kill off the patent system that is broken. Yay for that. Congratulations to that law firm and whatever!?
:) concept. But AmigaOS gave you a linked list for nearly everything, stored all it's windows and objects and tasks in them, and expected you to traverse it with exec.library and utility.library.
Actually I'm curious, when was your first experience of a linked list implemented in a highly exposed manner? As far as I recall it was in AmigaOS (but then I am only just young enough to remember that as my first OS and the first OS I cared coding for). A lot of systems do use linked lists, it's a very old (1960's?
Along with tags (tagitems, taglists) and ReadArgs they're things I miss in modern operating systems which seem too 'hidden' and trying to feel too unixy. It's all pipes and sockets and syscalls, blagghhh.. I'm glad QNX puts message passing right in your face, and DragonFly is bringing it all back to me again. I can't wait until someone patents one of those again!
The site displaying the patent must use linked lists somewhere in the code. The menu at the top says "Browse by Inventor", "Browse by Date" etc...
Presumably the patent site existed before the patent was submitted.
America, Home of the Brave.
You need A) some kind of college degree and B) a pulse.
I know some people who applied to the patent office very recently. They were hired after only a phone interview, and given a very short time table to make a decision (something like a week). They also try and rope you in for three years with a signing bonus. So it looks like they're desperate for warm bodies.
Once you start though, the first 6+ weeks are training. But given the joys of government bureaucracy, who knows how much of that is actual training in patent law versus pro-life indoctrination.
I was an examiner for awhile. Got out after 9 months because I saw the path. A lot of $, but a lot of OCD people, and stress due to quotas.
I had a B.S. in C.S. and I was simply working on GUI patent apps. They wouldn't hire someone with a degree in an outside area (like Business or something) to do C.S. work, although there were a lot of EE's doing C.S. work (although I see that in the commercial realm a lot too, not always to great success, but sometimes).
Wouldn't recommend it for anyone other than an anti-social who wants to make bank and doesn't mind a boring, high-stress job.
This is actually great and should server as a reminder to us all.
We should continue to submit rediculous patents just to show how counter productive software patents in general actually are. Anyone still have their first year CS course notes? There should be plenty of material to patent!
I don't mind they patent a hammer but not how it's actually used.
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the author.
its nice that drug companies each invested $100m and more drug research, got their patents, and they are now selling the drugs for reasonable prices to public and drugs are accessible anywhere in the world. not only that, but they are also making discounts and providing easy access, and even giving out drugs in most poor and needy countries so that things like aids or other dangerous diseases do not spread out.
oh wait - none of these are valid in this universe - all these are happening in alternate universes.
Read radical news here
Actually, I've heard tell they do have a sort of quota. It's based on quantity, not quality. So, they don't really care if it's going to get contested later, so long that it's out of their hands.
Normally I'm a bit skeptical when Slashdot interprets these patents, and s per usual, the summary does so. The patent does not cover doubly linked lists. It covers a generalisation of the idea that may or may not include doubly linked lists. Inthis patent, the list can be transferred in a number of predefined sequences. Doubly linked lists typically only allow traversal forwards and backwards.
But, this is a well known data type, known as a multiply linked list. A couple of minutes with google code search gave me an example in the form of the "engine" structure in GIST, which can be traversed in order of Active Engines.
Oh, and also - Dupe!
Most of the open patent examiner positions are low wage with no degree required. http://jobsearch.usajobs.opm.gov/jobsearch.asp?re= 9&vw=b&pg=1&jbf571=13&fn=4537&FedEmp=N&jbf574=CM56 &brd=3876&ss=0&FedPub=Y&caller=%2Fa9pto.asp
make cast? I've done make, make install, make clean, make menuconfig, make xconfig, make modules make modules install, but I've never done make cast...
But obviously I've never compiled anything with a linked list in it anyhow, since this dude just barely invented them.
My regime would require this for patents that are blatantly obvious or have as much published prior art as linked lists do. You can be there'd be a lot fewer frivolous patents issued if the examiner and the applicant were forced to eat the printouts if the patent turned out to be retarded.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
It is a patent. The submitter is just dumb.
linky
Help me take back Slashdot. When did 'News for Nerds' become 'FUD and Conspiracy Theories for Extremist Nutjobs'?
I had a friend who was an EE and worked for the USPTO for a while. They were very aggressive in recruiting her, but after six months she was desperate to get out.
As a few nearby posts have said, they are apparently desperate for bodies. They seem to be in a chicken-and-egg situation - while they are understaffed, the reputation for stress and being underpaid makes it hard for them to hire/retain examiners. Inability to hire/retain examiners results in the existing examiners being overstressed.
Sadly, for a LONG time, the USPTO was one of the government's biggest moneymakers but was also one of the most underfunded, as all of their income went to what was basically a "generic" fund allocation pool. I've heard efforts are being made to rectify this (i.e. let the USPTO use the majority of what they bring in rather than sending it elsewhere), which should help make things a bit saner.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
http://www.safarix.com/0131409093/ch11lev1sec5
The claims would seem to cover something like a skiplist.
Although in application and detail, I cannot see ever using this, as multiple orderings of a list sound painful and expensive to update and maintain. I suspect this is spaghetti code in the form of a patent, as I can construct the example out of three lists, and the additional headache would only be worth it if the reduction of half the total space used (approximately) would be significant (this is based on the assumption that the list items are pointers to the real objects elsewhere.) It should also be noted that that is just a reduction in the list size which does not include data (which I would expect to be far larger). It also would reduce the constant factors in item deletion (delete and (while increasing them for item creation), both netting zero change. I suppose it would allow for some features such as dynamic ordering changes (changing sequence while reading back the list (abcde read as abcba or something)).
I have to say that I feel a great deal of sympathy for the examiner who was responsible for dealing with this patent, as it was horrible (the horror...)
If people can connect to one another even the smallest of voices will grow loud.
--Serial Experiments Lain
I'm filing an applicaiton for "Process and method for posting an article on an a patent when it is issued, then posting the substantially same article a year later, and calling it news both times." Your ass is mine, /.
Reminds me of...
C: You shoot yourself in the foot.
C++: You accidently create a dozen instances of yourself and shoot them all in the foot. Providing emergency medical assistance is impossible since you can't tell which are bitwise copies and which are just pointing at others and saying "That's me, over there."
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
I sure the hell am glad that patenting software wasn't in vogue when Dr. Codd published relational theory. Or even for that matter file systems, GUI's, ASCII, keyboards, mice, you name it. Even command prompts.
Table-ized A.I.
I'll make a couple of quick comments:
First, claim 1 may be invalid under 35 U.S.C. 101 as claiming unpatentable subject matter. It has been my experience that a 35 U.S.C. 101 rejection will issue against a "software patent" where the claim is not directed to something that produces a "useful, tangible, and concrete" result (see, State Street Bank v. Signature). More often, this type of rejection will issue against a claim (not an application), where the claim is directed to purely mathematical operations with no tie-in to hardware to perform that operation. In reading claim 1, there appears to be no claimed hardware that performs the algorithm recited, and hence, I would argue that the claim is invalid. For a more thorough discussion of patentable subject-matter, please see Section 2106.1 of the Manual of Patent Examination and Procedure. However, without looking at the image file wrapper, I don't know what rejections were applied to this application to determine whether claim 1 was amended to overcome this specific rejection.
Now, that being said, if you are concerned about invalidating this patent (which I'll note issued in April 2006, almost one year ago), you should first find "prior art" before the earliest filing date of the application. In this case, that date appears to be September 26, 2002. I say "appears to be" because the application does not claim priority to an earlier filed foreign application or U.S. provisional application. Next, after gathering your pre-September 26, 2002, you should follow the re-examination procedures for submission. See Section 2200 of the MPEP. Keep in mind, that when a third-party submits prior art for a re-examination proceeding, the prior art should present a new question of patentability. After submission of the "prior art," that third-party is generally not allowed to make comments during the re-examination proceeding. Hence, if the USPTO finds that the "prior art" does not present a new question of patentability, you may have inadvertently made the patent "stronger" and less likely to be invalidated during litigation. Accordingly, you should consider whether infringing this patent may be better procedure, and thus filing a motion that the patent is, in fact, invalid.
This views represent my own and are in no way affiliated with any government organization or private entity.