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Popular (& Common Sense) Y2k Fix Patented
GnrcMan writes "According to this news.com article, "windowing", a method of fixing Y2K bugs where there is a window (IE 00-39) of years recognized as being 20xx years, has been patented by McDonnell-Douglas. They are now threatening to sue Fortune 500 companies using this popular (and common sense) technique." The years not updated are considered to be 19xx for those systems. *sigh* I love patents. Honest. Really.
In the public hearing it was stated that there is a law "so-called Rule 56, which requires that that material prior art, of which the applicant is aware, be disclosed to the Office." It was said that they understand that it may be hard to comply to this rule. I looked through the patent but I could not find any references to prior art.
.tiff format Significantly, the author of the patent affirmatively discusses and discloses two IBM written proposals, including a more general windowing approach.
It's on the front page of the patent, for gosh sake! Also, you will typically find a prosaic discussion of prior art in the beginning of the specification. I commend rereading the patent, which can be found on-line in fulltext and
So it seems even if there is prior art that this does not stop it from being patented if it is "sufficiently different" (see below). So exactly what role does prior art play in the patent process then?
The prior art determines whether or not the patent is valid. Prior art not disclosed during examination can be a basis for later invalidation, either by a suit in federal court, or by a process called reexamination. The Congress recently tried to "pump up" the effectiveness of third party reexaminations, but independent inventors bitterly fought against this, and a fairly lukewarm substitute is now pending.
From the excellent document What can be patented it states that abstract ideas (read: windowing for the Y2K problem) are not patentable.
While abstract ideas are not patentable, a particular approach toward "windowing for the Y2K problem" is almost certainly a patentable "practical application of a mathematical algorithm, . . . [by] produc[ing] 'a useful, concrete and tangible result". The Federal Circuit's recent decision in AT&T v. Excel explains very well the state of the law on the "mathematical algorithm" and "method of doing business" subject matter issues.
From the same document referenced in the above paragraph it also states that "The subject matter sought to be patented must be sufficiently different from what has been used or described before that it may be said to be nonobvious to a person having ordinary skill in the area of technology related to the invention."
Be very wary of paraphrases, and understand that unobviousness in patent law is not the same as the common use of the term. This was discussed at length in a recentl slashdot discussion on patents. No flash of genius is required for patentability, merely that it hadn't appeared or been suggested in the prior art, taking individually or in aggregate form.
Notice also that the [Amazon] patent states that "one skilled in the art" will appreciate that the patent also covers other ordering mechanisms such as email. This is incredulous... this means that the patent convers all automated email-based order processing systems!
The claims are the thing to determine what is and what is not covered. It describes what is, and what is not, within the scope of the patent monopoly.
On a side note, on the US Patent and Trademark Office's web site in the definition of a patent they state that "US patent grants are effective only within the US, US territories, and US possessions." How exactly can this relate to the internet?
Whenever the invention is made, used, sold, offered for sale or imported into the United States, the Patent Act is triggered. The examples suggested by the author would probably give rise to claims for patent infringement within the United States.
I find it's funnier if you think it's serious for a little while.
--
"L'IT c'est moi!"
This is unfortunant, because this is the patent system breaking down. The idea behind the patent system is that, to encourage individuals to publish their knowledge and advance the nation's technology base, we grant them a short term monopoly. The old 17 year (at one point I think it was shorted) patent was a short period of time in the lifetime of an invention, but the new 20 year from time of filing period is sometimes too long.
For computer technology, 20 years is silly. For this, it is rediculous. Society gets NOTHING from this publishing. Wow, you mean in 2019 we can all use, royalty free, windowing for fixing dates? Freaking retarded. Any invention that is of short useful duration (less than the patenting time) should not be eligable for patenting. They should have to protect it via trade secret. Society gets nothing.
I wouldn't worry too much. I'm sure that someone did something similar to deal with a 1 byte year (that would have a problem at the end of the decade) and will be able to show prior art. I'm sure that some has written SOMETHING that interprets certain 2 digit dates as 19xx and others as 20xx, so this isn't new and novel...
The patent system is not a bad idea, it is just being implemented poorly. We aren't getting benefits out of patent protection. I think that patent protection is fundamentally a good thing, but it should be reserved for REALLY new and novel ideas, not obvious, stupid ones.
Alex
This has got to be one of the most ridiculous things that I have ever heard about. I guess the fact that their technique almost perfectly matches with the 32-bit unix "Y38" problem is mere coincidence. Many, many people (including myself) have used 1938/2038 as the "window" in which old data gets updated to new dates for this very reason, and as "y2k" compliant date mechanisms and 64-bit dates become the norm, quite a few "pre2K" fixes are probably based on this technique.
Software patents are evil, and must be stopped before it is too late!!
If only "common" sense was actually that common...
Hmmmm, the US patent office appear to be accepting common-sense solutions to common problems...
Here's one:
An apparatus for firebombing the US patent office.
I should also patent the use of the phrase "patent this" in conjunction with any rude gesture.
"Alas, the Coders worked hard to fix their calendar problem only to find the Lawyer tribe destroying their efforts. Y2K famine soon became Y2K cannibalism, and both Coders and Lawyers were happily eaten by the Armed Masses."
Well, it's no longer unique. 19a0 = 199a = 2000.
A totally broken implementation of this would say 199a, a half broken implementation would say 19a0, (which is the internal representation) and a not at all broken implementation would also have the output code fixed to translate that to 2000.
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
Geesh, I had to do this on a Tandy 102 when I was in law school, and I finished in 1988. Hmm, and in crude financial projections in 1986.
And now that I think of it, I used this in a couple of different ways in the Nighthawk MIS system in 1982--and so has everyone else who used INKEY$ to map ascii to action codes.
And I seriously doubt that I did anything that hadn't been done 20 years earlier . . .
Someone told me recently of an incident that really leaves me to believe that patents aren't worth the paper they are printed on. I can't remember the exact details, but here's the basics.
Weed Eater originally came up with the idea for nylon string trimmers. They patented the idea, and were happy. Until Toro started making nylon string trimmers as well. They tried to sue Toro, and the lawsuit lasted for years. In the mean time, Toro continued to sell the trimmers. In the end, the judge decided that the patent really wasn't worth much, and that restricting Toro would mean they couldn't do business in trimmers, so Weed Eater lost, and since they put all of their money into the suit, they eventually went out of business. Case closed.
So, I think that these rediculous patents will never hold up in court, and anyone who tries to use them against corporations (especially big corporations) will fail.
I'm not sure when they started it, but Pick Systems has been using this technique in their operating systems and databases for years. 00-29 are considered 20xx and 30-99 are considered 19xx. This has been going on for probably at least 15-20 years. Any applications written on a Pick system (and probably other MultiValue systems) is already taking advantage of this feature. http://picksys.com PEACE
ignoring the bad form of replying to myself . . .
*duh* Two's complement. This is just shifting the zero point. And all the other things we do to get a little negative range out of a positive variable.
Or abstract math and measure theory explained begining with bundles of sticks . . .
If I recall, the SET EPOCH command was added in Clipper 5.0, which was released in 1990. (I know that Clipper S'87 did not have this command -- a fact that has caused me much grief in fixing old programs, since I have to recompile 'em with 5.x) I would think that the very existence of the SET EPOCH command, which is designed specifically for implementing this windowing technique, would count as prior art -- and that goes back to 1990.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
When was the patent applied for? I found no link to ibm's patent server. Anyway, I'm not proud to say it, but i wrote a small program in 1994 that wasn't Y2K-safe. I fixed it in 1995 using the 'windowing' fix that has apparantly been patented. I can't believe that every average programmer wouldn't come up with this on his own like I did, therefore the patent should never have been granted... / Krister
Freevo - Linux Multimedia Jukebox
So let them have the patent for all it's worth and fix the damn things right the first time!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Well, Win'98 has an option to select its Y2K window in the date control panel. And we all know that if Micros~1 can do it, anyone can. :)
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"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Quine "quine?
Whoops! My bad. I read the title of that patent and thought it had to do with sorting dates. I guess this shows exactly how vague the patent is...
4 6__
If you want a laugh, I think another patent covers 2-digit dates as well. It's also vague, so who knows.
http://www.patents.ibm.com/details?&pn=US057583
æeee!
I wrote this a while ago about the Amazon patent. I have inserted new comments regarding this even more obvious patent...
I was reading through the transcript of a public hearing on prior art. It sounds like when a patent is submitted people look for prior art in current patent databases (including some foreign databases). They also try to review what they call "non-patent literature" (NPL). This information consists of abstracts from "technical journals" and, if needed, an "information specialist" can assist the person in researching prior art. They did mention that in the field of computers the NPL databases may or may not contain evidence of prior art.
In the public hearing it was stated that there is a law "so-called Rule 56, which requires that that material prior art, of which the applicant is aware, be disclosed to the Office." It was said that they understand that it may be hard to comply to this rule. I looked through the patent but I could not find any references to prior art. Maybe someone else knows where these types of things are posted (if they are disclosed)? It was said that most patent submissions include (on average) about 4 documents of prior art.
In the transcript Keith Stephens nicely explains the need to disclose all prior art... It would be interesting to know how much prior art Amazon.com submitted for this "1-Click" patent.
So it seems even if there is prior art that this does not stop it from being patented if it is "sufficiently different" (see below). So exactly what role does prior art play in the patent process then?
From the excellent document What can be patented it states that abstract ideas (read: windowing for the Y2K problem) are not patentable. So if "buying things remotely with one action" is an abstract idea, then the key in Amazon's patent must be the interaction between the client, server, and "communication medium" as well as supporting technologies (ex. read in the patent about combining single orders into one order: "expedited order selection"). So it may be that these less abstract ideas are enforceable, but then again at the top of the document the "claims" that were made were very general. How is the idea of "windowing" not abstract and how can the person even prove he thought of the idea. I was reading through an IBM pamphlet on Y2k and it stated that they had been doing research about Y2K for years, including the windowing technique...
From the same document referenced in the above paragraph it also states that "The subject matter sought to be patented must be sufficiently different from what has been used or described before that it may be said to be nonobvious to a person having ordinary skill in the area of technology related to the invention." So another question I pose is when did Amazon "invent" this type of ordering system? Surely "sufficiently similiar" systems could be found before Amazon "invented" its ordering system. What about the windowing system?? I'm sure any decent programmer could have thought of that one... perhaps we need a few programmers in higher political places (alas, programming and politics don't mix well -- and I rather like it that way).
Notice also that the [Amazon] patent states that "one skilled in the art" will appreciate that the patent also covers other ordering mechanisms such as email. This is incredulous... this means that the patent convers all automated email-based order processing systems!
On a side note, on the US Patent and Trademark Office's web site in the definition of a patent they state that "US patent grants are effective only within the US, US territories, and US possessions." How exactly can this relate to the internet? What if a U.S. company contracts with a foreign (ex. European) company to create an e-commerce web site that remembers users credit cards and allows buying an item with one click of a button. Would the patent affect the web site because a U.S. company sponsered the development of the site OR would it not be under the umbrella of the patent since it was hosted in the foreign company?
The economy has already been hurt by people afraid of Y2K (although arguably it has created more jobs temporarily etc), so why must someone come and try to create damage after the fact? Has anyone actually found the patent online? It would make for very interesting reading. Perhaps we should start writing Congress about these patents, eh?
The issues of patents is a tough one, and hopefully we can work through (around) situations like this Amazon patent and somehow manage to let innovation flourish still. The idea of (software) patents is really against the entire concept backing Open Source. The real question is, what should be done about it?
-Kevin
Setting aside the stupidity of granting this patent for a moment, it seems to me that this is a particularly hard patent to enforce. If I were a large corporation and McDonnel-Douglas came to me asking to see the code running my in house systems, wouldn't I just laugh at them? Can they somehow legally gain access to the code of every company that might have conveivably fixed a Y2K bug to see how it was done? Some programs are out in the world for anyone to examine, sure, but an awful lot of Y2K non-compliant code is tied up in ancient in-house systems. Does having any software patent at all entitle me to look at all the code in the world to make sure it isn't violating my patent? That seems far fetched, but only a bit more so than granting this patent in the first place.
This is actually called a "cusp date". I know for a fact that Excel uses it, and has used it since at least 1995 (I did some really trivial y2k remediation stuff). DOS has been using this for ages as well (enter 1-1-00 as the date, it comes out 2000, most DOS file interrupts handles this the same way as well). As much as I hate to point to an MS product as prior art, well, it's the most readily available one in my brain right now. :)
This patent will fall hard. Don't worry.
æeee!
Here is the full text from the USPTO server.
It really is as simple as it sounds. Quite unbelievable.
When did they claim to have invented this technique? If it's after 1989 then they will be in trouble. The popular DOS language Clipper had a command in the language to enable this date window. A simple SET EPOCH TO 1980 would mean that any date entered as 01/01/80 would be seen as 01 Jan 1980, and 01/01/79 would be seen as 01 Jan 2079. You can change this to any date window you desire. Are they going to go after every Clipper programmer who has used that command in their program. Do we all now owe this company money?
What about the free software project Harbour who are creating an open source, cross-platform Clipper compiler. Can the participants be sued for including the command in their compiler?
The US Patent system is a Joke. Software patents should not be allowed. I'm glad I don't live in the "Land of the free"
-- Hulver's site
but still stupid.
8 989
;)
Here's the patent in question:
http://www.patents.ibm.com/details?&pn10=US0566
What does this mean? It means that you can represent years from 1900-2059 using a hexidecimal number, where the first digit is a decade indicator (10 years) and the second digit is an offset in the decade.
Okay, it's definately original, but I haven't seen anyone use this method yet. You may as well just represent your two-digit date as a byte, and use "100" as the value for 2000. This is good all the way up to 2155 too! If anyone has actually seen these dates anywhere, I'd like to know. Not a clean solution in any case...
Welcome to the year 19a0 everyone!
æeee!
This is the wrong patent.. The patent in question is the actual windowing one at:
8 989
http://www.patents.ibm.com/details?&pn10=US0566
æeee!
- A.P.
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"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Well, that's the problem with windowing systems in general. The idea behind the window is to take in the 2-digit year and store it as the proper 4-digit one, not to keep it 2-digit. Though this is Micros~1 we're talking about.
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"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Quine "quine?
Since submitting the article, I've found the patent in question. Here is a link to the abstract. The patent number is 5,806,063, and application was filed on 10/3/96. There's gotta be prior art.
Oh, and by way of correction. McDonnell Douglas assigned the patent to the inventor, Bruce Dickens. Mr. Dicken's (and his attorneys) are the ones running around threatening everyone.
--GnrcMan--
My predecessor at Executive Consultants implemented Y2K windowing in the PAMS educational administration system -- in *1988*!!!! (Because we designed to carry kindergarten records all the way through 12th grade, one field in the grade transcripts file header was "proposed graduation date", and, WHOOPS, Y2K oops in 1988 when you gave a proposed graduation date 12 years in the future to a 12th grader!).
Of course, our window was, "00-50 = 2000-2050", while "51-99=1951 to 1999", since hopefully our students were not born prior to 1950! (Hmm, a 50 year old 12th grader? It could happen, I guess!). And now the program will automagically convert two-digit dates "on the fly" to 4-digit dates using those windowing rules so that we can do date math and date display in a consistent manner (the database actually had 4 digits for dates, but screen displays only had 2 digits and it was pretending that we were in year 00 through 99... had to find every @#$%@ date in close to a MILLION LINES OF CODE and half the bloody dates weren't even marked as date types, they were strings that were being sliced and diced to do various funky date calculations for, e.g., attendance!). I got my subsystems Y2K ready, then left before they could press me into service fixing other people's subsystems (grin). (Well, Y2K was definitely one reason I left, but the main reason was professional advancement... please don't take flippant statements too seriously).
Anyhow, the point is: this patent is bullshit. We did it in 1988, and I'm sure we're not alone. The 20-year-mortgage people surely did it for their computerized mortgage records as early as 1979 for much the same as we did for our 12-year-matriculation problem. Heck, 30 year mortgages in 1969 probably used windowing!
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
The patent you are referring to was not assigned to Bruce Dickens by McDonnell Douglas. The correct patent is 5,806,063
--GnrcMan--
I recall the breaking point is 2014, so if the year number is part of the patent this may not be relevant, however that also makes the patent easy to circumvent.
Nope, it's more general than that. A quote from the patent:
The window may be arbitrarily selected. For example, the decade could begin with the 1950's and end with the 2040's, or it could begin with the 1980's and end with the 2070's.
--GnrcMan--
I've had it. It's time we the geeks who write these programs start flexing a little political muscle. It can begin with something as simple as flooding our Senators and Congressmen/women with e-mails faxes and yes even snail mail. It's getting to the point where you can't even write #include **** without violating some jackapes patent. We wrote the code and yet idiots like these patent it and steal the money from our hands. What's next a patent on breathing? Count the patent violations on this page alone. Links, gif images, color, lists, the very page I'm using to submit this ramble are all in violation of some jackape suits patent. It's time those fatcats in DC hear about this. For Non-Americans you can help as well write your governments. Inform them how patents like this stiffle your economies. How they inhibit your ability to import code and products into the US and abroad. Make your government put pressure on ours to change what has become a feeding trough for suits who can't create just steal. Nov 5th may be burn your gif day but frankly that isn't the answer, we need to stand up to these suit banstards and say FSCK Q!!! We aren't going to take it. It's time the fat cats learned the true power and influance of the geek communitte. We have the numbers, the brains and the means, lets use it. I therefore submit to the geek communitte a proposal. National flood the gov day. And just for fun let's make it Thanksgiving...
I'm sorry, I'm to tired to be witty at the moment so this message will have to do.
5,668,989 is for storing the decade digit as binary coded decimal, so 1905 -> 0x0005, 2005 -> 0x0A05.
5,806,063 is indeed the windowing patent given to McDonnell Douglas, as I posted.
Even more staggering, if anything, is 5,630,118. It just says "give it to a subroutine to decide" -- any subroutine!
Okay, this calls for a boycott! I'm never gonna buy another aircraft from them again!!!!
I am not absolutely certain if this example pre-dates the patent date, but the Oracle database engine has a special date format, where you put in 'RR' instead of 'YY' when you format dates. It then windows the date around 1950/2049 (I think).
I remember using this on a project a number of years ago - I'm pretty sure it was before 10/1996. Even if it wasn't, it was close to then, and the people at Oracle must have been planning it for a while before release. If that was even the first oracle db release to use it.
bakes
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Ho! Haha! Guard! Turn! Parry! Dodge! Spin! Ha! Thrust!
Here is summary of "Basic Patent Law for Programmers" -discussion. We should analyse possible solutions that were presented and see what of those should be employed.
This is so old, there's prior art everywhere. I'm enough of a dinosaur that I used the technique back in the late 70's, and it was common practice. (Er, that's the 1970's, not the 2070's. Oh shit, I just used windowing, they're after me.)
-ac
Software patents are not yet granted in Europe. However, the EU is considering whether to follow the US system and grant patents on computer programs, which would be damaging to consumers and businesses, as well as software developers. You can help persuade them that this is not such a good idea; check out freepatents.org.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Speaking of that, what happens when 2,029 comes? I mean, wouldn't it be Y2K all over again for a lot of these companies who used the windowing fix? And don't count on them replacing the computers, that's the way it was supposed to be when programmers originally programmed the code back in the 70's. And we all know how companies replaced the code, yea. I'm sorta concerned about this, why not make it totally safe for the next 8,000 years instead of only the next 30?
*sigh* Not only do we have the usual cliches about patenting everything in sight (Stop breathing: You're infringing on patents 5,678,910 and 5,789,012), but also we have the (nowadays untrue) reiteration that the Y2K bug happened because programmers wanted to save a byte or two. When does this nonesense stop?
The Y2K bug happened because people window dates already. It of course seems absurd to patent the cause as the cure. The reason computers process dates with two-digit years is that humans process dates as two digit years. Twenty to thirty years ago, those two digits might have meant something in terms of storage, and yes, there is legacy COBOL code that is that old which exhibits the bug for that reason. Nowadays, those bytes are nothing, and the Y2K bug in modern software is mainly due to sloppy human custom being poorly translated to computer form.
Using two-digit years is a long-standing human practice, and let's face it, it's pretty arbitrary how we handle them. Humans generally have a pretty good sense of context, and I doubt machines will ever match it. Nonetheless, even humans can (and do) get tripped up.
*sigh*
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
Even though people are already doing it, and it is obvious to any parasite with a lawyer, I've patented the technique of applying for a patent for a direction that everybody in the industry is taking, even though such a patents such never be granted (isn't there a requirement for innovation?). Then saying nothing while everyone starts using "my idea", and hitting them for $$$ a few years later.
All these guys like McDonnell-Douglas are gonna get a huge bill from my lawyers pretty soon. They should have checked the patent archives before embarking on such a scam^H^H^H legal course of action, but now it is going to cost them!
${YEAR+1} is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop!
It's barely two months before "Y2K" and it's certain that thousands of consultants are scrambling around computer systems all over this country trying to fix "Y2K bugs." Some of those consultants are working for the Federal Government. Some of those consultants working for the Gov't are using this "Windowing" technique to fix the bugs. McDonnel-Douglass is going to want to sue these consultants and/or the federal government for violating their patent, causing those consultants to have to re-do all their work with some other method...
...less than two months before "Y2K".
Can you say "National Security"? Can you see the federal government using its pull to invalidate this patent pretty f-ing quickly so it doesn't have to scrap everything they've been working on for the last couple of years?
This really could be a good thing. Of course, what will likely happen is that only this one patent will get overturned and the rest of the patent system will continue to be screwed up and useless just like it has been.
I'm kind of surprised that nobody has taken the tack that, as stated in the Contitution, the whole concept of "patents" and the "patent office" comes from the phrase, "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;" and that it seems pretty obvious that the patent system, as exists, no longer promotes Progress of Science and useful Arts.
Someone brave should just sue the patent office as it exists as being unconstitutional and use as evidence the huge number of patent lawsuits and the ways these massive technology corporations now keep "patent portfolios" not to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" but to use as essentially blackmail to keep other companies from suing them, or as in this case with McDonnel-Douglass, to threaten every computer-reliant corporation in the country with lawsuits for doing what's essentially government mandated work to update their computer systems. It might work.
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My mom's going to kick you in the face!
So on the whole, it's probably best for patent applicants to put in references to any related work they know about: the PTO will probably not check anyway or engage in detailed analyses, but it will make it that much more difficult to challenge the patent on the basis of prior art.
An Airbus A320 can be told what year to extend the flaps? I thought that airplane was faster than that.
Some are rather particular to formats used in mainframe applications, but some sure look like they'd represent common practice, things any programmer worth his salary should be able to recreate...
- US5758336: Date format and date conversion procedure using a packed binary format
- US5668989: Two-digit hybrid radix year numbers for year 2000 and beyond
- US5630118: System and method for modifying and operating a computer system to perform date operations on date fields spanning centuries
- US5761668: Method and apparatus for converting computer software and databases for the year 2000
- US5644762: Method and apparatus for recording and reading date data having coexisting formats
- US5737735: Method and apparatus for recording and reading date data having coexisting formats
- US5600836: System and method for processing date-dependent information which spans one or two centuries
Linux and Y2K...If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.