Slashdot Mirror
Red Hat Hit With Patent Suit Over JBoss
An anonymous reader writes "A small software company is claiming that Red Hat's JBoss open source middleware violates one of its patents and is asking a court to stop Red Hat from distributing the product. Software Tree LLC claims that JBoss infringes on its database patent for 'exchanging data and commands between an object oriented system and a relational system.' Software Tree's partners include Microsoft, and that the suit was filed in Eastern Texas, which is known as a plaintiff's paradise for patent actions."
From the Fscking Patent:
O RLY? They honestly want us to believe that they invented O/R mapping? Then what is this ACM paper from 1996?
Object-relational mapping by Scott Amber
Either somebody didn't do their homework and their patent is going to fall under a weight of prior art, or they're just plain patent trolls. Given that they waited until 2009 (9 years after the patent was issued!), I'm leaning toward the latter.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
"Software Tree's partners include Microsoft, IBM, Borland, and Sun"
Fixed that for you.
The difference between theory and practice is that, in theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
6,163,776
Link to US PTO United States Patent: 6,163,776
"exchanging data and commands between an object oriented system and a relational system."
This sounds familiar... hmmm.... ah.
Business Objects' United States patent number 5,555,403 entitled "Relational Database Access System Using Semantically Dynamic Objects."
Fight fire with fire...
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
They can, because RedHat is selling/offering their software in that state.
In the patent application (dated 1998) they stated:
One problem existing in the art is that there are no systems and methods to bridge the gap between the programming paradigm used for object-oriented systems and the programming paradigm used for relational systems.
(from here on in you know there's going to be no prior art submitted that does exactly that, when in fact there was plenty.)
Liar liar pants on fire.
Biliski was about the patent office rejecting a patent appliation, not an invalidation of any existing patent. As such, Biliski stands for the proposition that the Patent Office can reject certain types of patents that are like the one considered in Biliski. Apparently the patent in question in TFA was filed and granted long before Biliski came out, so Biliski has no practical effect on that patent directly.
Indirectly, one might argue that the patent should be invalid because of its nature, i.e. it never should have been granted. But that has to be done on a case-by-case basis for patents already granted.
So the short answer is, no.
Really? I was thinking it was from Idiocracy. Though, they were both written and directed by Mike Judge, I don't recall "electrolytes" being used in that film.
In Idiocracy, the future is dumb and they replaced all forms of water (except the toilet) with Gateraid(tm) like product and frequently promote it as better because it has "electrolytes". Including watering plants with it. Which happens to be destroying the crop population and no one can figure out why... except Luke Wilson, smartest man in the world. =P
Happily bought this film for $6 for my show of support. =)
"The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth." ~1984 George Orwell
Software Tree claims that Oracle has infringed the '776 Patent through products including the Oracle TopLink.
"Defendant has actual knowledge of the '776 Patent, and actual knowledge that the Oracle product known as Oracle TopLink product, and all other Oracle products that include TopLink, infringe the '776 Patent," the original complaint states.
No, the narration explains that he wasn't smart enough (or, more accurately, educated enough) to figure out/know why. He just had a different tradition, one from an average ~105 IQ society instead of the miserable future.
Rather amusingly, Idiocracy is itself a dumbed-down and toned-down adaptation of the short story "The Marching Morons" (1951): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marching_Morons, which I recommend reading.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky