Amazon S3 is Patent-Pending

theodp writes "If your startup is counting on a copycat service to emerge for Amazon S3 disaster recovery, you might want to start thinking about a Plan C. On Thursday, the USPTO disclosed that Amazon wants a patent for its Distributed storage system with web services client interface invention, aka Amazon Simple Storage Service."

Comments

Obvious 75 times

[niceone]

Wow, I usually take a quick look at the claims in patent stories to see if the patents are really as bad as the headline. In this case I can't say I read all of them - there are 75 freakin' claims! But the ones I did manage to read I couldn't see anything that wasn't obvious. Here's the first claim for example:

1. A system, comprising: a plurality of computing nodes configured to implement: a web services interface configured to receive, according to a web services protocol, client requests for access to data objects, wherein a given one of said client requests for access to a given one of said data objects includes a key value corresponding to said given data object;
a plurality of storage nodes configured to store replicas of said data objects, wherein each of said replicas is accessible via a respective locator value, and wherein each of said locator values is unique within said system;
a keymap instance configured to store a respective keymap entry for each of said data objects, wherein for said given data object, said respective keymap entry includes said key value and each locator value corresponding to each stored replica of said given data object;
and a coordinator configured to receive said client requests for access to said data objects from said web services interface, wherein in response to said given client request, said coordinator is configured to access said keymap instance to identify one or more locator values corresponding to said key value and, for a particular one of said one or more locator values, to access a corresponding storage node to retrieve a corresponding replica

Surely someone's done a redundant db with a web services interface before? How else could they have done it than that?

Re:Obvious 75 times

[kripkenstein]

Surely someone's done a redundant db with a web services interface before? How else could they have done it than that? You see, this is what happens when non-lawyers read patents. Now, I am not a lawyer either, but I at least read what Wikipedia says about this matter. As I understand it, claim #1 that you mention is an 'independent' claim. Later claims (some of those 74) are 'dependent' claims. They refine and specify what the independent claim states.

So, yes, the independent claim #1 is very broad. It probably wouldn't hold up in a court. But since no legal precedent exists, Amazon don't know if it will or not. So they keep it as independent claim #1. If in fact prior art invalidates it, then the patent still pertains to whatever the far-more-specific dependent claims #2-#75 refer to. Presumably a very specific manner of implementing #1. Amazon actually hope to patent that specific implementation, but they write it in this notation of independent-dependent claims because that is how patents are written.

But, as I said, IANAL. So perhaps we all shouldn't speculate too much.

Prior art - memcached

[seifried]

I can think of some very similar products/etc, for example memcached:

http://www.danga.com/memcached/

You can have multiple memcached servers servicing multiple front ends (just ask wikipedia.org!)

Park Place - the Open Source S3 clone

[complex]

Hurry, grab Park Place, the Open Source clone of S3, before it is gone.

Park Place is written in Ruby by Why.

Re:Simple combinations

[MojoRilla]

...Simple combinations of existing technologies are exactly what 90% of patents are. Even some legitimate.

Due to the recent Supreme Court ruling, simple combinations of existing technologies are no longer patentable. The obviousness test has been strengthened, and no longer requires a "a "teaching, suggestion, or motivation" tying the earlier inventions together." According to Justice Kennedy, ""The results of ordinary innovation are not the subject of exclusive rights under the patent laws."

IANAL, but given this ruling, it appears that patents like the Amazon S3 one would fail under this new ruling.

Re:That's a great idea!

[AlecC]

Poor fellow - quoted out of context as always. What he actually said was words to the effect that "Anybody who refuses my budget increase must think that everything that can be invented has already been invented" i.e. the exact opposite of what eveybody thinks he said. He was applying to Congress for a bigger budget.