Morfik Patents AJAX Compiler

MikeyTheK writes "It appears that under the radar, the USPTO granted Morfik a patent for the "System and method for synthesizing object-oriented high-level code into browser-side javascript". Reading further, it appears that they have patented the compiling of high-level languages into AJAX apps. The high-level languages include "Ada, C, C++, C#, COBOL, ColdFusion, Common Lisp, Delphi, Fortran, Java, Object Pascal, SmallTalk, Visual Basic, and Visual Basic.NET". It would appear that the application date is September, 2005."

Comments

Re:My First Thought

[AKAImBatman]

Did I ever mention that I HATE the patent search system?

In any case, I managed to pull the patent. (Search in published applications for application #20070055964) It looks like this is the exact same patent, just in different forms. (One an application while the other is the issued? Could someone who knows more about the filing process chime in here?) In which case, Morfik may have a valid patent. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

yaccety yacc

[Bastard of Subhumani]

For all the handwaving and buzzwords in the application, it converts code written in language foo into language bar. That's a compiler. Now if they want to patent (copyright's possibly more appropriate?) their specific individual implementation of a compiler, then let them get on with it. If they want to patent compilers as a concept they can stuff it and I don't think they have a hope.

Re:yaccety yacc

[Dausha]

"it converts code written in language foo into language bar."

It reads like what I've seen done for years: having a program (e.g. PHP-based) that produces javascript or calls to javascript. Heck, I wrote something like that as recently as 2005. "Compile" could be as simple as building an array of javascript function calls that are then embedded into a web page.

That said, another case of poor judgment of the USPTO. Last summer I took a class in Patent Law at my law school. The professor showed a patent for a pocket handkerchief folded into a pocket square inserted into the left breast pocket of a suit coat. It was submitted in 2001 and granted that year. Of course, pocket squares have been around for decades, and somebody brought that to the attention of the USPTO, who went back and filled a retraction. The original patent remains, but a follow-on rejects all the claims. I think the same should be done here.

Truth be told, they need fewer government and more computer geeks working in the computer group of the USPTO, methinks.

Obviousness, Prior Art, a bad patents

[dfoulger]

I read through the whole thing, that this is just a very bad patent. Not bad for people in general. It can't possibly stand up to scrutiny. Its just a bad patent at every level I can think of up to and including "badly written".

Its a bad patent because it is so "obvious". All they've done is to define JavaScript as as a p-code machine and created a (set of) compiler(s) for translating arbitrary programming languages into JavaScript "p-code". They have, in effect, attempted to patent compilers, albeit in a very limited way. Doing this was extrordinarily obvious, so much so that it wouldn't surprise me if there were hundreds of instances of prior art.

This may be one reason why the patent is so badly written. A truly general patent would make claims against all possible programming languages, but this one explicitly does not. Almost every claim is tacked down to a specific list of languages, and that list varies from claim to claim. Worse, none of the claims address some of the most widely used web programming langauges, including Perl, RUBY, Python, and PHP. My guess is that either (1) the patent was written by an amateur or (2) that these list variations reflect what they were able to find in their search of prior art. The mere existence of variations in the claims is probably evidence of the obviousness of this patent.

As for prior art, we've already seen claims of prior art in IBM (1996) and Microsoft (1998) products. That doesn't surprise me at all. I can recall discussing use of a JavaScript translator for an Ajax-like project I was in involved with (at IBM Research) in 1996. We didn't actually do it while I was on the project, but it was an option, and certainly not one that anyone would have believed was in any sense patentable. Appearance of such code in VisualAge during that same time frame would be anything but surprising. That is, for instance, the same time frame in which Mike Cowleshaw is translating REXX into Java p-code while retaining the interpretability of the REXX.

There are so many other examples of this kind of machine code translation, going all the way back to the original Fortran. I don't see a chance that this patent will hold up to scrutiny.