Slashdot Mirror
Yahoo Patents Dynamic Page Generator
Here is the abstract of their patent: United States Patent 5,983,227 (Nov. 9, 1999)
Dynamic page generator
Abstract
A custom page server is provided with user preferences organized into templates stored in compact data structures and the live data used to fill the templates stored local to the page server which is handing user requests for custom pages. One process is executed on the page server for every request. The process is provided a user template for the user making the request, where the user template is either generated from user preferences or retrieved from a cache of recently used user templates. Each user process is provided access to a large region of shared memory which contains all of the live data needed to fill any user template. Typically, the pages served are news pages, giving the user a custom selection of stock quotes, news headlines, sports scores, weather, and the like. With the live data stored in a local, shared memory, any custom page can be built within the page server, eliminating the need to make requests from other servers for portions of the live data. While the shared memory might include RAM (random access memory) and disk storage, in many computer systems, it is faster to store all the live data in RAM.
It's here: http://worldforge.org/website/about/pa tents/. Credited it simply to 'slashdot' as it touches on ideas brought by many people here. You might like Ideas For Fixes.
Any high performance db will attempt to cache and share data in memory when it's appropriate. It's the obvious thing to do to enhance performance. Yahoo's only feature seems to be that they also cache the per-user view of the data as well. As the general principle of cache/don't recompute is always an option that can speed up access, there's little original here.
When I hear about some new attempt to force the church into the state, or to decrease protections against arbitrary search and seizure, I know the ACLU (of which I am a card-carrying member) will coordinate efforts against it.
There is widespread agreement that software patents are evil. But who's binding and guiding the outrage? The only name that keeps coming up is the LPF, but there doesn't seem to be much more there than a name - I can't even join or send money through their web site (http://lpf.ai.mit.edu).
Don't look at me - I'll give money, and write letters, but my organizing and people skills are zero. Maybe that's the problem, the old canard about how organizing geeks is like herding cats.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
What would be the effect for free software interests of the inadvertent weakening of intellectual property itself? One cannot cynically trust the legal system to always reward the rich and punish the poor and disenfranchised (as seen by the recent antitrust findings of fact). Supposing this mechanism ends up in court cases where intellectual property is drastically weakened because judges or juries won't accept patentholders clubbing 'the little guy'? This could seriously weaken the usefulness and relevance of patents in general. Surely it's a bad idea to assume (out of some sense of teenager hip cynicism?) that such abuses of the IP system can just happen without consequences to the abusers? Again, I question whether this may be weakening IP in general, since patents are being granted that are clearly in error and unworthy of such status. That considered, what would the implications be for free software if the millenium saw a collapse of the significance of intellectual property- for instance, picture this patent mess and also the ludicrous behavior of the music and film industries on behalf of intellectual property. If all that ended up 'pushing it' too far and breaking the usefulness of IP, one might envision a Sampling World where everything is copied from everything else, perhaps with a layer of obscurity, perhaps as openly as mp3s of commercial music are traded. Picture software being similarly used, with the 'rules' of IP and patents so convoluted that nobody can ever in good faith keep informed on what they might be infringing on. In a world of such information fluidity, would this be an arena where free software would thrive, since it is primarily suited to maintaining information flow in situations of severe _restriction_? Perhaps it would grow like kudzu vines in the newly boundless environment :)
This is a subject coming up more and more frequently on slashdot. I think it's time that we contacted somebody at the patent office for the weekly interview. You never know, it might make a difference. At the very least, they might tell us how we can make a difference.
-Dom
This is incredibly vague, but hell, even QLink on the C64 did stuff like this back in the mid-80s. And they got a patent on this?!
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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?
You can try the IBM patent database or the US Patent and Trademark Office. I usually use the former.
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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?
Like the subject says, we need to break out the pen and paper (or keyboard and printer) to write our duly appointed Congressmen -- and women! -- and tell them that the US Patent and Trademark Office is royally screwing things up lately.
Don't send email -- Congress-people just do not take email seriously yet. (When they do read it, they send a snailmail reply back -- that gives you an idea of how they operate). Even phone calls are not as good as letters, because letters stick around when a phone call is over when you hang-up.
Congress created the USPTO, and they can modify it as needed. It is obviously not doing what it was intended to do, nor is it benefiting the people of this country.
We need to get moving, write our Senators and Representatives, and let them know what is going on. If enough people make their displeasure known, action will follow. Put the Slashdot effect to some use, and write Capitol hill.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
It occurs to me that Yahoo's motives in this may not be as broad-sweeping as people are trying to predict... just like Amazon apparently got their one-click patent specifically to sue B&N, I wouldn't be surprised if this were a mechanism designed specifically as a hedge against Excite.
My Yahoo and Excite start pages already look surprisingly similar; if Yahoo believes they found competetive advantage in how they are putting them together, they may simply be trying to protect that competetive advantage using whatever means they happen to have at their disposal.
Although, quite frankly, my Excite page loads faster...
I'm not being an apologist here at all, I am also fundamentally opposed to the concept of software patents. All I'm trying to present is a guess at what might be their strategy behind it.... I will say that it makes absolute-zero sense for Yahoo, a company whose core business is still being a search engine (ok, directory, technically, but nevertheless...), to go after any number of sites they're indexing; it makes a lot more sense for them to target specific competitors building similar portals by attempting to hamstring their technical options.
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
MOO;IANAL.
There used to be a picture linked here.
No, you now have one year to file for a patent on your idea. If you don't, someone else can. If no one else files within one year, your idea will safely be in the public domain.
- John
Serious comments:
The more patents they grant on these sorts of processes, the less enforceable all patents become. Recent developments indicate that the USPTO is totally out of their depth when it comes to the Web.
-- Dave Aiello
In order for there to be an infringement on claim 1, there must be:
a plurality of user processes, one process per user accessing the server system;
This does not appear to apply to Apache, because Apache uses a single process to handle multiple requests by different users.
Does anyone know enough about the internal workings of IIS to know if it allocates one process per user, or request? If so, then this patent claim may only be infringed on by sites using Microsoft software.
Claim 2 appears to be infringed on by all web servers that use user logons for any purpose, including slashdot, and that store any user preferences locally.
If so, then the rest of the claims are irrelevant, because it appears impossible to construct a useful web server without infringing claim 2.
It is much much worse than a claim on use of shared memory. The real killer broad claim is #2, which is an attempt to claim ALL pre-compiled user-specific template pages.
Use of shared memory (#4), server-farms (#5), and cacheing (#6) are additional claims over and beyond the basic claim #2. Claim 2 applies whether these other claims are implemented or not.
The nitty-gritty of claim #1 is just a fallback position, which protects Yahoo's detailed process in the event that Yahoo's other claims are ruled too abstract. Claim #1 does not apply unless you specifically generate lists of relevant sports teams and weather reports from user postcodes. The real horror is claim #2.
Claim 2
Claim 4
The term "template program" would appear to cover any per-user pre-generated page which includes ASP or PHP or Javascript to fill in the blanks. Bespoke formats in which the user template contains just field names instead of script fragments might also be considered "programs", executable by the web-server plus appropriate module.
Very, very nasty.
Ater reading a gob o' comments, it seems like most semi-aware folks are disgusted by the blithely ignorant ways of the US patent office. Few, however, have ideas about what to do. Lobbying is good. Opening the eyes of the mainstream media is good (the ABC News (I think) coverage on gene patents the other day was fantastic). But it's not enough.
/. is somewhat constructive, but it seems to me that that's a step short of a public discussion forum dedicated to discovery of prior art. Instead of lamenting about how bad the patent process is on /., howzabout a place where every article is a ridiculous patent, and the typical reply is "check out XXXX and YYY which both did this years before LudicrousPatentFiler Inc did." Moderation categories could include "prior art," "common knowledge," "other patent infringment," "nonoperative," or -- god forbid -- "valid."
/source go, anyway? Think I could run such a thing on a 384k dsl line?
But how about more focused public discussion? Tossing these up on
The mere existence of such a community-led patent debunker might make the average company a bit more careful about throwing several thousand dollars at a patent that gets invalidated in an hour or two.
Where did that
Jon (xeno*wolfenet!com)
I think not...(*poof*)
...Yet another US Patent Office Run Amok Story!
What next? A patent for bold and italic fonts?
The way they give out patents right and left, it ought to be pretty easy to patent the concept of shared memory itself. Then sue Yahoo for patent violation!
IPC::Shareable can (and is) used for this technique on mod_perl sites. I've used it myself. I haven't read the patent yet, I guess I'll go check it out.
See the modperl archives for many other people using this method for caching data (templates and other stuff). I guess it could be argued that anything using a <perl> section or startup.pl in modperl is using a similar technique.
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
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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?
According to the last sentence in the abstract, shared memory includes disk storage, not just the "conventional" shared memory. This would include databases as well. Ouch. I wonder what would have happen if an artist were to patent their brush-stroke technique, or patent the fact that they used cubes in their paintings. As I see it, artists patenting these types of things are very similar to programmers/corporations patenting the way they develop apps. So sad.
No. Vignette StoryServer caches page fragments to disk. Of course, if it happens to be caching to a filesystem that itself is cached in memory, pretty much the same thing is happening.
However, good old GroupLens, the personalization server they bundle, does cache user preferences and such to memory. Of course, these aren't page components. But plenty of other systems do that.
I've said it before, and I'll keep saying it, not that it would make much impact.
Any idea or expression which can be thought by more than one person by sheer coincidence should never be allowed to be protected.
Expression is not an entity to be hoarded. Implementation may have its merits in the varying methods used, but the thought processes which led to those methods are ultimately responsible, and come from varying sources of inspiration which law can neither protect, enslave, or induce.
Research which truly *is* research, could be protected, certainly, as one protects the fruit of any labour (although for moral reasons, medicine, science, etc. they often shouldn't be). But clever programming tricks, methods that are already taken for granted, or legal wording of common-place procedures written and submitted for the purpose of making a buck... that's not justice, that's not even moral.
Patents fall under law, law is imposed to promote justice, and a capitalistic greedy move like this on the part of a bunch of Yahoo's does no justice to anyone.
mindslip
Suggestion /. with all the patents coming out that deal with hardware/software like this one ie shared mem, maybe it would be a good idea that when someone submits an article for a patent, they are prompted to also send the patent number, and a link to where they got this info, and all that jazz. Rather than just the abstract.
I mean really the abstract is just that 'abstract'. IT is supposed to be a 1 paragraph summary of the invention in less than 150 words.
flames > /dev/null
moderate -1Million
send flames > /dev/null
Only 'flamers' flame!
Netscape's Server-Side Javascript (formerly known as Livewire) is a buggy, sloppily-written engine for running compiled web apps in a memory-resident manner. In other words, the templates are kept in RAM, and have been since late 1995.
Since the version in their 3.0 webservers, it has had decent server-level object support, too. Which means, yes, data cached in memory at the master HTTP process level. A common tecnique is to populate an array element at the server level when a piece of content is first retrieved, and only hit the data source again for records that aren't present, or which have aged.
Even more fun, I'd be glad to show interested lawyers an application I architected at a past employer that's been in production use for almost 3 years now. It's a distributed custom-email delivery system that caches content data both at the server level and at a spoke client level, in RAM. The clients request and use the cached data to assemble outbound messages.
As for using OS-level shared memory for this sort of thing, I'm sure some database and high-performance filesystem vendors are having a good laugh right now.
the full patent is here
Netcenter and t.o both have "themes" for web sites that customize based on user preferences. Im sure prior art would negate this anyway.
"We hope you find fun and laughter in the new millenium" - Top half of fastfood gamepiece
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
So it's probably a self-defense patent. So what?
The very fact that self-defense patents are obtained and used (despite their cost) shows that the patent system has broken down.
And if the big guys have a portfolio of self-defense patents, where does that leave the little guys who can't afford them? At the mercy of every peredatory lawyer in the employ of a big guy whose product is threatened by competition from the little guy's invention.
Maybe the current administration of the company really intends to use the portfolio defensively. But gore their successors' ox and those "defensive" patent portfolios can become offensive in very short order.
Maybe the EFF needs to start collecting patents and giving free liscense to them to prevent this. Maybe have a patent fund that patent authors can donate their patents to under the condition that they are liscensed freely.
Or perhaps used against anyone who attempts to enforce bogus patents? Or who goes after a little guy at all?
Now there's an idea! A common-defense patent pool for the little guys! B-)
(It could even be self-funding, as part of the settlement when they bring their guns to bear.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
OK, I'm just wondering - how often are Yahoo going to be able to find out whether someone is using such a system? I mean, I could program a system to do that tomorrow - but unless I make the code available, nobody is gonna be any the wiser.
/.'s and other Open Source developers of the world, but for developers who are creating custom systems for clients, such a technique is surely impossible to detect.
Of course - that is a real issue for the
Secondly - can they prosecute someone for using a program that contains such code, or does the patent only cover writing code to implement such a system in the first place?
Finally, can Yahoo use such a patent - originating in the US - against companies in other countries, or does the patent only cover US applications development?
Also intersting to note - Yahoo are currently being sued themselves over patent violation, Wired have the article.
A little planning goes a long way...
As I understand it, what they're saying is that they pre-allocate a large chunk of memory per user (rather than dynamically allocate what's needed), and then fill it with whatever that user is doing.
In addition, live data is regularly polled from other servers and stuffed into shared memory, thus removing the need to access the servers at the time of request.
This would seem to give Yahoo a 2-tier caching system:
Servers --> Shared memory --> User Cache --> User
This may or may not be efficient, depending on how it's set up. It certainly means that the data from real-time data sources stops being real-time, and can be as old as the time-out on the shared memory cache.
As for being innovative, well, that is arguable. There is certainly prior art for cache heirarchies (nlanr, the makers of Squid, have an entire network of web caches, for example, and Squid is built for exactly that kind of work). Using shared memory as a caching system is a trivial derivative of traditional caching, and wouldn't pass muster on it's own.
Using a heirarchy inside a single system, to link multiple servers, is perhaps slightly more novel. I don't recall seeing that being done before.
However, the patent could be considered a non-issue. If you use a heirarchy of -dynamically allocated- cache spaces, you automatically have something that is distinct from the system described in the patent. Also, if you have an N-ary graph of caches, rather than a simple tree, you would avoid the patent by using a distinct structure.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
ASP's Session and Application objects have done this for years. I use it to cache weather, stock quotes, news items, etc. Microsoft might do something good and sue the crap out of yahoo for this...
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
What I doubt though is that it will continue to grow. We will never have a reality such as in Star Trek, or some of the worlds the Sliders go to. We will never have a world with terminals in every room of every building hooked up to the internet linking the whole world.
I say this because all these internet patents are scaring off lots of people that could be developing the websites that would make such a thing feasible. Linking the world together is nothing without the content that would be needed. Think about it, there is no more one-click shopping without a royalty be paid to Amazon, so E-commerce sites will have to do things the longer, harder way. If they do not do it the hard way they will have to develop a new concept which if history shows they will run out and patent and leave the followers in the same boat.
The bottom line is for all these internet businesses is all about the Benjamins, and the world has never benefited from greed alone. These people claim to be "innovators" of the internet, as far as I'm concerned they are all just a bunch of greedy bastards holding the world back.
http://slashdot.org/search.pl?topic=ludicrous_pa tents
but what would the logo be?
This just illustrates how inappropriate patents are for software. Even if this were an original idea (and as others have pointed out, it certainly isn't), it wouldn't be worth granting a patent on it, because it would restrict competition far too much and subject developers to legal harassment. It's also merely a combination of existing ideas - filling in templates, and caching data in memory - that would be obvious to any skilled programmer.
Of course Yahoo are free to copyright the code they are using, and that makes sure that they can get a good return from their effort. But allowing companies to patent particular ideas and then sue other developers is bad news both for the software industry and for consumers.
The paper Against Software Patents is slightly old, but a good introduction to why granting patent monopolies on software techniques is a bad idea.It's not too late to stop software patents being introduced in Europe - check out freepatents.org if you live in the EU.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
I tell you something that really bothers me about this - somehow I can't see Jerry Yang being really into the idea of broad software patents like this.
Does anyone have his email so folks can (politely) ask him about this policy? Maybe we can convince him to pledge to not use the patent, but hold it open for community use?
A little planning goes a long way...
See http://www.thinkgeek.com/geekgod for the
anti USPTO T shirts. Also take a look at and join
the LPF (www.lpf.ai.mit.edu). If enough people
join it starts making a difference
Alan
It is becoming rapidly apparent to me that the Patent system as we know it is in need of serious modification. I'm open to argument about what exactly is wrong (IANAL), but if something like this can actually get patented then *something* is definitely wrong
I suspect the patent office clerks (or whoever actually reviews and issues these things) lack the technical knowhow they require to properly evaluate (or, hell, even understand) these things and look for prior art. This unfairly allows those with $$ to take advantage of their ignorance and engage in the kind of frivolous litigation we so love here in the U.S.
To my understanding (and again, IANAL. do we have any lawyers here on Slashdot? any care to comment on the basics of patent law?) patents are basically a legal monopoly for a set time period to allow the inventor of a particular 'technique' to profit from his labor, at least in an intellectual sense. Generally speaking, this is a reasonable idea, imho. I seem to remember that the time period allotted is 7 years (someone correct me please?), and while this may be fine for real world (meatspace) inventions, that's simply aeons in computer time. It's like a 200 year patent in the real world. Perhaps we should consider some modifications to our patent system to account for the rapid pace of modern technology?
Has this type of practice always been common in patent litigation? A lot of it seems blatantly sleazy and deceptive. I've only noticed it recently, but then again, I've only been paying attention recently...
Anthony
^X^X
Segmentation fault (core dumped)
"I think any time you expose vulnerabilities it's a good thing." -Attorney General Janet Reno
I think we will soon hit critical mass with patents. Couple of nights ago, one of the major evening news magazines (like 60 minutes or 48 hours -- side note, why do they always use a number as the first word in the title?) was doing a story on human genome patenting. They covered the fact that several institutions cannot even screen for Alzheimers or breast cancer, because the genes were patented. The doctor made it clear that the tests were not patented, just the genes, making *any* test that screens these genes subject to the patent.
Patents like that -- where there is a direct detrimental effect on people as a result (who are unable to even get a test done!) might push the patent reform to front and center. Perhaps then, we can push the absurd software patents to the forefront and try to get some good ole fashioned reform going ("Its a good ole patent lynching, mama").
The need for reform *is* coming to the consciousness of the mainstream. Lets make sure that software patents are not forgotten when that happens.
Unforunately for you poor non-Statesmen (non-americans), patents are usually respected internationally. So, it may be a problem of our legal system, but it affects everyone .
Cheerio and all that sort of rubbisn, eh mate?
Hates people who have stupid little sigs
I am not a lawyer, although I've been known to play one in my consulting fees.
Slashdot ran an excellent article on the basics of patent law a few weeks ago. It's reposted on Advogato, the new community site I'm starting for free software developers. I'm hoping to collect a solid set of patent resources at Advogato over time, among other things.
Hope this helps!
LILO boot: linux init=/usr/bin/emacs
The worse the patents get, the better the odds of software patents being thrown out en masse.
Consider: Government powers explicitly derive from Constitutional assignment. Clause 8 of Article 1 grants the following:
Clause 8. The Congress shall have Power 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.
Promote, eh?
The patent office has expressed gross incompetence in its assignment of software patents--indeed, it may not be possible, due to the rapidly iterative nature of software development, to correctly apply standard patent methodologies to software. (As I've argued before though, lots of unwarranted patents make for a rich Patent Office and very rich Patent Attorneys! So I don't particularly believe the overworked and underclued patent examiners are being overworked or underclued accidentally.)
For whatever reason Software Patents are completely failing their Constitutional mandate, there is widespread consensus that the United States Patent and Trademark Office has long since wasted away any shred of legitimacy when it comes to the realm of software patents.
Without a legitimate claim to the constitutional powers they derive their right to regulate from, all their powers dissipate, and the software patents already assigned become null and void.
Comments? I have more to say, but I'd like to hear what you think about this.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
That is patented? Jeeze. Oh well, I have lots of ideas on improvements of the system (like adding in various dithering and resampling to improve the large-scale image quality), so maybe I could one-up that guy. :) Oops, nevermind, I just divulged that idea to the world at large - which means it can't be patented at all. How about that, folks. ;)
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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?
IMO, Patents, as a general concept, are a good idea. If done correctly, they reduce trade secrets, allow the inventors to profit from them, but after a while, everyone benefits. Patents were designed to promote free access to information, and the designers understood that businesses don't just give stuff away, they need a quid pro quo hence, the exclusive access for a time period.
/. are torn to shreads, with prior art examples, obviousness, etc. But, at that stage, they are granted, it's too late. So, what about making all patent applications public upon filing? Then allow a time period where people can object, and send in examples of prior art etc. to the patent office. This would not require a court case to reverse the decision, and hopefully it would then make it less likely for stupid patents to get through. The PR for a company trying to patent obviously would also be harmful, acting as a deterrent.
However, the implementation has screwed up royally. It doesn't protect the small inventor, trying to challenge a granted patent, even if it is "obviously" wrong is expensive. They are now used as weapons, bargaining chips, and the time peroid in a fast moving industry is too long.
Many patents that get posted here for discussion on
Also it would eliminate the worst type (IMO) of patent - the submarine patent. Imagine what would happen if a new technology (eg XML) that was touted as "open" was massivly deployed, then it was discovered to be patented? Think of style sheets, and it's definitly a possibility.
--
Exigo spamos et dona ferentes
Yes, but he was an examiner for the Swiss PTO, not the USPTO. The Swiss PTO would never let patents like these through.
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Open mind, insert foot.
Another possibility is that this fund could be used to pay the royalties in bulk for all GPL software. So, for example, somebody from GNU goes over to Unisys and offers to pay them a lump sum to permit royalty free use of the patent for all software released under the GPL.
This would have two effects:
1) It would provide a way for people developing free software from having to pay royalties on something that they might not make money off of in the first place.
2) It would encourage more people to use the GPL because they could write their software without having to pay various royalties that they might otherwise be committed to.
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This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
...before we can plug lawyers into a Doom interface, and take out the bad ones? :) Maybe we could do this with patents?
Right fscking on man :) My previous post covers basically the same points. We (the people ;) should be looking to do a major overhaul of the patent system in the coming years. It is becoming more of a hinderance than a help in its current incarnation.
:)
I'm sure serious discussions of this are already underway. Anyone got pointers or recommendations for these kinds of resources? I saw a link on an earlier post to a T-shirt designed by Alan Cox at www.thinkgeek.com which I found simply delicious
Anthony
^X^X
Segmentation fault (core dumped)
"I think any time you expose vulnerabilities it's a good thing." -Attorney General Janet Reno
In this particular case, what does Yahoo!s patent really mean? Not Much 1) If another site wanted to use identical technology in their code to increase the performance of their access, how would anyone (including Yahoo! and the Federal Government) know? The only way would be if there was an inside informant who squealed. 2) If the other site was known to be using a similar set of programs, so what? Copyright law provides protection (supposedly) to prevent copying of code. There is some (very) limited protections against backward engineering a piece of software. But if someone wanted to develop, say, a new word processor that looked just like Microsoft Word, Bill Gates would have a really hard time seeking any recourse in the courts. "Look and Feel" cases haven't done well. As for the garbage that we see getting patents these days... don't get me started.
Mike Eckardt
meckardt@yahoo.nospam.com
http://www.geocities.com/meckardt
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This is what I figure it's about.
It's all to do with portal type sites, not templates and not just shared memory. The idea is that when a user comes into a portal site for the first time his/her preferences are loaded not into the current (CGI?) process out of the database, but into a shared memory cache. The next page they view doesn't have to fetch them from the database - just from the cache.
Seems still pretty universal - although the patent does specifically talk about user preferences in portal web sites, so anyone whining on about using shared memory in their PDP-11 application can stop now. However anyone who's developed a portal-type (and yes, this applies to slashdot) web site that caches user preferences in shared memory then this affects them. I don't believe slashdot is affected - it calls the database every time for its user preferences.
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
Yahoo's patent seems to be the work of, well, some dumb yahoo. The concept of caching content locally to cut down on server load (and network traffic) has been around for decades.
Slashdot, yesterday, carried an item about Hotmail joining the spam Black Hole list. It seems to me that one way to put an end to this patent silliness is to do the same thing: block email from known patent abusers. Block unisys.com, yahoo.com, etc.--and give the software patent enthusiasts the option of continuing to abuse the system or be able to connect to the rest of the world.
I have already blocked unisys.com from my network, due to the GIF nonsense. (Not without pain--a major client uses Unisys A-series and Clearpath servers.) I'll block yahoo.com too if it turns out that they have any dream of enforcing this.
As Arlo Guthrie once pointed out, if just one person does this they'll think he's crazy. And if two people do it they'll think they're both [well, we'll just skip what he said, since it ain't considered genteel these days]. But imagine, my friends, imagine if dozens of people, hundreds of people block domains that use software patents. Why, they'll think its a movement....
Write an HTML page that explains why you won't permit connects to Yahoo, post it, and redirect any Yahoo links to that page. The power of the boycott is the most effective weapon you have.
Yes, and the things he examined the patents for were physical devices, not this current deluge of "well duh" things.
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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?
And isn't proof of prior existence all that you need to call a patent stupid and null it? Or am I just rambling because it's so early?
More or less, but since you have to present that proof in court, you'll need a truckload of money to go with that proof.
I lost count long ago over all "This should never have been patented"-stories. Every time there are the usual replies about how evil the system is and the "what if i patent _this_"-posts.
C'mon You are supposed to be more creative than this! Can we think of a system that:
- Protects the guy who really spent years of research coming up with something novel. He/she really should have the chance to make something of it before he is overrun by the Big Evil Company.
- Stops the same guy from blocking the whole market for decades if the invention succeeds.
- Lets me protect the name of any product I might sell.
- Doesnt sent lawyers on me when I happen to use a name similar to something the Big Evil Company has TM:ed
- Doesnt require me to scan every business area in every country for names that might sound similar to mine
- Somehow deals with the situation where two local businesses suddenly meets over the net.
- Actually is more suited for inventors than lawyers
It is obvious that the system is not working right as it is. Please be bright!All opinions are my own - until criticized
But don't they do any research in the area of the patent to find out if it is in fact a new creation?
Why can't they ask some computer body (IETF?) if this is in fact something that should be patented, or if everyone else is using it already?
And is this patent worldwide? (If it is, then surely other countries should have some say in the matter).
You bring in a few patent attorneys and having a standing arrangement that they give a price tag for the battle and when they get that much money in the coffers, they can go out and start taking down the patent. If not enough money is collected after a given period of time, then the money would not be charged to the credit card and the patent would go on its merry way.
Thoughts?
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They`ve also applied for the patent in Europe (EP0889421) and Australia (AU6991598) as well as worldwide (WO9857276). The application no. is EP19980304651 19980612. As far as I can tell, these haven`t (yet) been granted.
This I got from esp@cenet, which holds a searchable database of the last two years of patent applications from several countries.
Several people have pointed out that patents like these not only won't stand up in court, but that they're not even intended to. I'd like to expand on that a little.
I remember reading somewhere that a patent-office official had publicly admitted that they couldn't keep up with the flood of applications and were as a matter of policy allowing dubious patents through in the hope that the courts would sort things out. Whether the admission was real or just a figment of my imagination, this is clearly what the patent office is doing.
Patents are supposed to be (a) innovative, and (b) non-obvious, among other criteria. This patent is obviously neither, and there are enough other companies with enough legal muscle to ensure that it's never enforced, so I don't think it's much to worry about. The danger comes when a patent is granted on something obscure and the only people who care are little guys who don't have the resources to fight it successfully in court by themselves.
This brings me to my other point: patent fights. It's very common nowadays to respond to an accusation of infringement by pulling out a few of your own. "Oh yeah? Well, you're infringing our patents X, Y, and Z. Are you sure you want to take this to court?" That is what's really behind a lot of the "preemptive patenting" to which several other posters have referred. One of the tools of the high-tech business is developing a patent portfolio not so those patents can actually be used to club others over the head, but to avoid being clubbed oneself. Companies have been bought just to pad patent portfolios. It's sick, I know. I'm not defending the practice, just reporting it.
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Make them last 2 years maximum. That would probably make Yahoo's patent already out of date, but at least if gives people a chance in the ever moving internet world. On second thoughts, make it 1 year. :)
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