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USPTO Grants Google a Patent On MapReduce
theodp writes "Two years ago, David DeWitt and Michael Stonebraker deemed MapReduce a major step backwards (here are the original paper and a defense of it) that 'represents a specific implementation of well known techniques developed nearly 25 years ago.' A year later, the pair teamed up with other academics and eBay to slam MapReduce again. But the very public complaints didn't stop Google from demanding a patent for MapReduce; nor did it stop the USPTO from granting Google's request (after four rejections). On Tuesday, the USPTO issued U.S. Patent No. 7,650,331 to Google for inventing Efficient Large-Scale Data Processing."
We're probably never going to get rid of software patents, odious as they are; at this point there are too many enormous players, of which Google is not at all the worst offender, with way too much invested in them. But it occurs to me that one change to patent law that might be politically feasible, and which would really help cut down on clearly frivolous patents like this one:
If any claim in the patent is held to be invalid, the entire patent is invalid.
Claim 1 of the patent is simply an arcane, legalistic description of the operation of pretty much every parallel processing algorithm ever. Some of the subsequent claims actually do describe novel, non-obvious, and useful ways of handling large data sets across multiple processors. If the patent were restricted to these claims, well, it would still be a software patent and therefore Evil, but it might at least have some claim to promoting "the progress of science and the useful arts."
In general, it seems like this would make both patent trolling, and big companies like Google lawyering small independent developers to death, a little more difficult.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
how do you get a patent awarded on something that has already been released as "open source" (Hadoop)
This does not add up, either Hadoop is not really open source, or US patent office are as FCKING stupid as EVERYONE seems to think they are.
Come on people, don't you get tired of the shame of working for such an organization....don't you want to see freedom and democracy restored to the world..?>?>
Why do you think the recent Google-China issue is either all about Google having a conscience or all about Google acting in their own self interest? It's both, and it's complicated.
For one thing, having a conscience is in Google's best self interest. Public image is crucial for a company like that.
For another, companies Google's size (or any size, if they are competent) don't make decisions based on 1 factor. They take into account many, many factors, including conflicting ones, and they arrive at a decision. In this case, clearly both the conscience issue was a factor as well as the self interest factor.