Facebook Ordered To Turn Over Source Code

consonant writes "A Delaware District Court judge has ordered Facebook to turn over ALL its source code to Leader Technologies, who allege patent infringements by Facebook. The patent in question appears to be for 'associating a piece of data with multiple categories.' Additionally, while the judge in question deems it fine to let Leader Technologies look at Facebook's source (for a patent, no less!) in its entirety for a single feature, it would be 'overboard to ask a patent holder to disclose all of their products that practice any claim of the patent-in-suit.'"

Comments

this patenting thing ...

[Anonymous Coward]

If we're getting to the point where people are winning cases because they've effectively patented a design pattern, then we're all in trouble.

I mean, "associating a piece of data with multiple categories" -- sounds like every relational database schema on the planet to me.

Re:this patenting thing ...

[91degrees]

That's not how it works. The description is just a description of what a patent is for. There can be a hundred different methods to associate a piece of data with multiple categories, and each one can be patented separately.

Now it may be that every single one of these is obvious and therefore non-patentable but you can't make that determination from the title.

Re:How about patent reform?

[MickyTheIdiot]

While we're on a reform kick in this country maybe we could undertake patent reform.

Think of all the corporate money that is being thrown at killing healthcare reform in all it's different guises...

and then multiply it by 200.

That, my friend, is the reason it isn't happening. Find ways to reduce the corporate influence and money in these fights first and then there is a chance.

Re:Patent infringement x 2!

[owlnation]

Anyone wanna take bets on how long until Leader Technologies comes out with their own social networking site that looks very similar to Facebook, and gets sued for having some technology that infringes on a Facebook patent?

It really doesn't matter if they do develop a social network site or not. There's been dozens of Myspace and Facebook clones out there. None have particularly succeeded. The underlying tech isn't what drives their success. It's the ability of their Marketing Droids to convince people that the emperor is really not, in fact, stark naked.

Re:Well...

[webheaded]

You know, I get really tired of seeing articles like this, reading the actual article, and being a bit pissed off that they "got me" with their stupid summary. You'd think I would have learned better by now but the sad part is that most of these sensational things are entirely believable. It's really kind of depressing.

On another note, who the hell writes these summaries? Do they just have really awful reading comprehension or does all the sensational shit just float to the top? I suppose it's a combination of those 2 things isn't it?