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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."
Open technologies/standards should be licensed in such a way that the license can be revoked if a licensee patents something using that technology. So if Amazon patents a storage system which uses web services then they are not allowed to use web services anymore. However this doesn't help against patent troll companies as they are not interested in creating any useful thing. Hopefully these trolls will sue Amazon for a few billion dollars very soon.
It keeps mentioning "web services". I assume that refers explicitly to something like using existing http and related protocols to encode files and transmitting them over port 80.
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The Web refers to the World Wide Web. It has nothing to do with other protocols such as SMTP, POP3, IMAP, NTP, NNTP, SSH, telnet, FTP, echo, finger, gopher, named,
So if you roll your own protocol to accomplish the same thing, I don't see that it would violate this patent, if it is even enforceable.
Take away the web services portion and much of this looks like enterprise wide backup software done back in the mid 1990's by companies such as IBM and Mission Critical Software. Of couse, they may have their own patents on the procedure. Maybe the use of "web services" is to distinguish Amazon's patent from theirs or from the literature on the subject.
Example of why patent reform cant happen. Most problems with the system could be fixed by replacing the idiots with people who wont look at this sort of obvious nonsense but these guys like Amazon have the money and a vested interest in abusing the system like this so unless overnight 100 million people make this a campaign issue it just cant happen. It's a pretty sad situation because in theory patents are a very good idea, so if some poor guy invents some amazing genuine invention he cant get usurped by big companies and can profit from his brains. Of course in practice this isn't working out so well the last decade in particular.