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Red Hat Claims Patent On SOAP Over CGI
WMGarrison writes "US Patent 7453593 claims command-line processing by a web server of SOAP requests, resulting in XML responses, from and to a remote client. The HTTP Common Gateway Interface (CGI) operates precisely as described in Claim 1. If you POST a SOAP document and return an XHTML response or a SOAP document, this infringes Claim 2, since both XHTML and SOAP are XML languages. This patent thus claims to own the processing of SOAP documents by CGI programs."
...dont drop the SOAP.
We have know for a long time that Red Hat is a patent troll. They make IBM look like noobs.
If this results in the abandonment of SOAP, I'm all for it.
t
OK, to save companies time and money (except for the Trolls and parasites), just get rid of software patents already. It's not good for buyers or sellers. It's not good for employees. It only benefits lawyers and patent troll parasites. Patent reform shouldn't take years, it should take days. I don't want to see another story like this ever again.
Since returning HTML would not be covered, AHAH requests would not be covered.
You should be using AHAH anyway.
Perhaps I should patent Talking. A means of transferring information between people. If you submit audible sounds to a individual and get audible sounds back, then you are infringing. :-) For a follow up I'll patent political speeches.
When will the madness end?
Think Deeply.
AHAH on the server is just another request...that's the whole point
This is my sig.
Ok so who patented POSTing a JSON and returning an XML? Or GETing a key/value pair and returning JSON? Or POSTing XML and returning porn?
And why only over CGI? Why not patent the use of server text preprocessors as well?
THL phish sticks
What's the impact of this? If this is such big news, perhaps you could spell that out in the summary.
The claim would only come into play if a CLI application was used. Use a Non-cli application and viola no infringement.
1. Red Hat are now employing too many lawyers and they need something to do.
2. Red Hat have started to become the target of a lot of patent trolls themselves and this is what the said lawyers recommend as a defense mechanism.
All of the various "free patents" sites are pure spam. The USPTO, like many other patent offices around the world, lets you view patents online for free - including free from ads.
In this particular case, you can read the patent here, straight from the horse's mouth.
RedHat seems to have a firm understanding of how the current patent system works. I salute them and hope in the future for them to own a lot of stupid patents like this one.
These are defensive patents. You have to file them if you're in the US software business, or else risk getting sued for $billions. Read how Red Hat licenses their patent portfolio to all open source projects.
libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
The In Re Bilski case invalidates this patent, as it is not tied to a particular machine.
DISCLAIMER: Not only am I not a lawyer, my sole basis for my statement is knowledge gained from my somewhat-attentive reading of previous /. comments (not articles) regarding the "In Re Bilski" case. I'm not sure if the word "case" applies to In Re Bilski. I'm not sure if "In Re Bilski" should be written with initial caps, as opposed to "in re Bilski", for instance.
Proctor & Gamble claims prior art on SOAP.
A circular load bearing device where a bent-wood rim is suspended around a hub with wooden segments of equal length. This is useful as a method of facilitating the motion of wagons, chariots and the like. Optionally a metal (bronze or iron) rim can be placed around the wooden rim adding greater durability at the expense of weight.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Of course they are. Of course they are. It's not bad when "we" do it.
Cretin - a powerful and flexible CD reencoder
I haven't had to wade through that many acronyms since "Good Morning Vietnam"
Scanning the patent briefly I saw the earliest date was 2005.
In 2003/2004 I wrote a CGI script that greps a csv file pipes it to sed to generate xml and returns that xml to the client.
Does this count as prior art?
Actually I am writing a (client side focused) Ajax course now and intend to use a toy cgi service that greps a csv file and returns the data in not XML but JSON. That is not XML pfew I do not infring the patent.
this is ridiculous!
MS Robotics Studio uses Soap to XML. Haha, how like life now.
Strive for perfection in everything you do. Take the best that exists and make it better. When it does not exist, design
I mean, SOAP's entire purpose is to be a messaging mechanism over different mediums, protocols, architectures, and implementations; ergo, if I implement "Handling SOAP over " how on earth could that be patentable? Maybe they're referring to actual soap (like Lava, or Lever 2000, summat...)
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Just because there is a patent does not mean RedHat has a practical defensible claim on something. Slashdotters seem to think the Patent system is some kind booby-trapped chess game. Yes, some companies are misguided and sue. But we don't know the real reasons WHY they sue. In some countries there is not even a Patent vetting process - you can register a patent for anything you like and for a fee it gets filed. RedHat has to make a business decision about if there is financial benefit to protect their claim, against whether the Court will think the claim is bogus. If you can see the claim is bogus, why do you think a court will not have the common sense to come to the same conclusion. Judges aren't stupid.
That fact that a patent is on file does not take precedence over, nor does it bias, the legal process.
they will get rid of SHOWERS.
Best Slashdot Co
That I have no choice but to ignore it completely. It has brought itself into disrepute, as the legal lingo would put it.
The claims of a patent aren't completely isolated from the specification of a patent. While multiple cases warn against reading limitations from the specification into the claims, the terms in the claims often only take on meaning in light of what the specification teaches.
Take a look at figure 1 to get a sense of what Red Hat's inventor claims to have created: a command-line interpreter that can take something like "cat members | http://ws.example.com/ldap-lookup -name | xml://phone > member-phones" and produce meaningful results. That is, making the Unix command line a tool that seamlessly integrates services that are available remotely.
Does this help in interpreting the terms in the claim: "A system comprising: a command-line interpreter ("CLI") to obtain a text string describing a data processing pipeline ... process-launching logic to launch a plurality of child processes ... and remote service interaction logic to accept delimited data strings from a first of the plurality of child processes on a standard input" (simplified).
Well...CGI does not really have a command-line interpreter. You can run a CGI script from the command line, but Apache doesn't need to go through sh when it communicates with a CGI script. If you are running a CGI script from the command line, you're running it locally (even if you have remotely logged into another machine, you are still running it locally on that other machine). Thus, running the CGI script from the command line does not involve remote service interaction logic.
CGI is a poor example to use of something that might anticipate this patent. Perhaps a stronger argument could be made that the claimed invention was obvious in light of combining a command-line interpreter with wget or rsh, but given how long command-line interpreters have required additional programs to access remote services, an argument could be made that integrating the functionality directly into the command-line interpreters is, in fact, non-obvious.
Face it- if Red Hat hadn't done it, M$ probably would have. It's likely a "defensive" patent they are unlikely to use unless provoked. It's all just a game. A big, high-stakes, unfortunate game.
Since returning HTML would not be covered, AHAH requests would not be covered.
Even under a typical AJAX environment, switching the encoding from XML to JSON might work around.
You should be using AHAH anyway.
What do you mean by AHAH? Are you implying that not using query suggestions or client-side pre-validation creates a better user experience?
A circular load bearing device where a bent-wood rim is suspended around a hub[...]
Except in Australia, such a patent was issued.
SixApart should lay down the law.
Most of IT support and administration staff weren't fond enough of SHOWERS to use it. SOAP itself wasn't necessarily a child process or deamon for SHOWERS as it also worked with BATH and HANDWASH. Neither of which are popular either. Most of them will just hope that DEODORANT will cover up the problems that SOAP, SHOWERS, or BATH would have fixed but generally everyone can tell if they start sniffing around the network.
I hear good things about the open source project PTA BATH.
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
The USPTO, like many other patent offices around the world, lets you view patents online for free - including free from ads.
The various "free patents" sites provide the service of translating the images from TIFF in an obscure codec to something more popular, such as JPEG, PNG, or PDF.
the In Re Bilski ruling only applies to Process claims. The claims in question are directed to a system.
If a system's only novel aspect is a process that happens in the system, in this case XML encoding and decoding at each side of the connection, then what's the difference between a system claim and a process claim?
If you can see the claim is bogus, why do you think a court will not have the common sense to come to the same conclusion.
Because the patent holder may have already won by default. If you were sued, would you have the money to defend yourself in court?
I just patented the word 'bailout' i'll be rich overnight.... If that doesn't fly, maybe then i'll use my time machine and go back 2 years and patent the term 'Joe the plumber' oh yea, and i also own a patent for any document containing the letter 'e', so you all owe me eleventy billion dollars!!!
if there are Psycho-like shower scenes. My first thought was soaping done in CGI/animation, hehehe....
Lovely or bubbly?
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Come on Slashdot... This is very old and stale news...Can't you find anything new and interesting to post?
I've been using such a command called bric_soap in Bricolage (Perl-based CMS) for the last six years at least.
Introduced in 2002: ViewVC
An example (see the API docs, navigate to bin -> bric_soap ...): "Republish all published stories. This is useful when a template change needs to be reflected across a site. The sort -k2 -t_ -n is a crude way to make sure that newer stories overwrite older ones."
bric_soap story list_ids --search publish_status=1 | sort -k2 -t_ -n | bric_soap workflow publish -
In 2004 my capstone project was a TV/DVR remote control software package that ran on a wireless PDA. It worked by sending SOAP requests to a web server that would execute command line instructions on a media service and return XML data based on the result and state of the device.
Their patent sounds like it is almost an exact duplication of my capstone.
I'm sure I have the source floating around somewhere, but I still have images from the app up on the web:
http://ringdev.com/images/BlueSkinListing.bmp
http://ringdev.com/images/RedLineSkinListing.bmp
http://ringdev.com/images/RedLineSkinDetail.bmp
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Bricolage had a command-line SOAP utility in 2002:
http://viewsvn.bricolage.cc/bricolage/trunk/bin/bric_soap?view=log
Police State UK - news and
With any luck, this will finally put SOAP to REST.
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
Wrenches can be used to kill people. So can metal broomhandles and tennis rackets. This fact does not make anyone who carries a wrench, a broomhandle, or a tennis racket a bad murderer.
(My father used to keep a tennis racket in the car to arm himself when he was in a bad neighborhood - works well and you won't be accused of brandishing a weapon)
There are few (any?) other companies that 'get' OSS more/better than Red Hat. They license their patents to the community at large, effectively subverting the usual use of patents, much as using the copyleft license uses copyrights to flip normal copyright conventions on their ear.
Red Hat is one of the really, really good guys. With Red Hat patenting CGI/SOAP, they've effectively prevented others from doing so, assuring all of our freedom to use CGI/SOAP. (No, I don't work for RH, though I was once a shareholder)
Blaming RH for its patents are like calling somebody who uses a shotgun to get mistletoe out of a tree a murderer.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
When I was at Cabela's we had built what is now called SOAP. We were doing XML request/responses across HTTP LONG before SOAP was SOAP... That prior art will blow this patent out no matter WHO claims it... We were sending XML to from an AS/400 to/from Apache web servers / Java web servers. We compiled the source for castor on the AS/400 and were marshelling/demarshelling XML on an AS/400.
The Truth is a Virus!!!
Let them have it!
SOAP is one of the stupidest technologies I've seen in a long, long time.
http://www.redhat.com/legal/patent_policy.html
Police State UK - news and
They will come for IME, but nobody will say anything because - dude - it needed a SHOWER...
A patent is not infringed upon unless all claims within the patent are infringed upon. The slashdot submission does not take into account the other claims in the patent.
Of course, that doesn't really matter, because there are numerous prior art implementations of a CLI integrating to SOAP for something like this. For example, IBM WebSphere Portal has an xmlaccess command line utility that does exactly this.
Dear Slashdot Editors
It has come to my attention that you have been infringing my patent "Using More Acronyms Than Ordinary Words in an Online Summary". Please remove the infringing material from your site or contact me about the purchase of a license.
Sincerely
AC
They came for SOAP and I said nothing, because it was a bloated ugly PoS.
Then they cam for XML and I said nothing because I prefer JSON.
Then they came for JSON and I said nothing because they gave me a bonus.
Then they came for Linux and I said nothing because I was able to retire on that bonus and no longer cared about IT.
Then I had a mild heart attack and on the way to the hospital Microsoft's MyShock defibrelator control software crashed.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
HELLO PATENT OFFICE!?!?!? Did you ever think to realize that SOAP was designed for CGI to begin with??? This is such a frivilous claim to invention that it makes my blood boil. We need some serious patent reform in this country. The least that could be done is to hire actual computer engineers to analyze patent applications before they are awarded.
A pipeline of (.NET remoted) powershell services that outputs XML would probably violate this patent. Since that was conceived of years ago, I find it hard to believe this patent it valid.
Eight years is still a long time, but much better than twenty. And they say you can require an examination before the patent owner comes after you with it. I didn't know Australia was doing that.
So, yeah, it was granted, but it could never have been used in adversarial action without an examination first, and it appears it would expire this year.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
It's hard to provide a covenant to protect people who haven't entered into a covenant with you. Only God can do that, and His protection is not what you seem to think protection is.
Besides, this kind of patent is valuable only as a part of a big bundle of patents to drop on the table in front of Microsoft when they bring their big bundle of the same kind of patents and try to scare you with them. Everybody around the table knows that these patents would disappear in a brief six months or so, if challenged, but the act of challenging invites the challenge. It's for inducing the 800 pound gorilla to think twice before they try abusing the courts.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
You are aware they aren't patenting things to prevent others from using those concepts or to change a fee to use the process. Instead they are doing it as a defensive measure against the likes of SCOs, M$ and greedy lawyers. They aren't patent trolls, they are protecting themselves and the Linux.
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If RedHat wanted to build a useful patent portfolio to protect open source, this is not the way to do it. Instead, they should create a separate foundation with a charter that would allow its patent portfolio to be used only in case Red Hat (or other open source developers) are being sued.
The way it is set up right now, if Microsoft or Apple buys Red Hat, all of RedHat's promises go out the window. In fact, RedHat itself can change its mind if it feels wronged by some other open source project.
RedHat's promise is worthless, and I think it's likely made in bad faith (i.e., RedHat knows that it's wortheless).
First of all, that's just a "promise"; they can change that whenever they want and it's not enforceable.
Second, they don't even list the Apache license as one of their "approved" licenses; under their definition of "open source", Apache is not an open source project.
If they want to have credibility on this, they need to do a whole lot better.