IBM pays their company employees to file patents. It is also one of the key factor for promotions. That's why you can see lot's of stupid patents out there in IBM name.
That reminds me the story of one of my friends, who worked for IBM in a 3rd world country. Basically the role of their whole department was customer support + QA, fixing low-level bugs on IBM products developed by other teams (in different countries). They received a visit from one of the higher-ups in IBM, for an all hands meeting with the basic message of "We checked our statistics and we don't see any patents issued by this department. What is happening? Surely you do a lot of innovation, why don't you patent it?!"
This doesn't work for patent trolls. Patent trolls, by definition, don't have a business outside of patent licensing and suing for patent violations. The Mutually Assured Destruction of an IBM fighting a Samsung over patents doesn't hold for 3 lawyers in three levels of LLCs and a handful of near expiring patents suing a Samsung.
At one of those big companies I worked at a co-worker was working on a patent that read something like displaying health information from a JSON payload on a mobile application. For some reason I couldn't find it, so I assume it was rejected, but yeah this happens.
Sometimes they do, very successfully. Several prominent tech companies backed efforts to neuter patent trolls in the prior decade, to positive effect. Patent trolls are one instance where big tech's interests are largely aligned with smaller tech companies, as both hate them.
In the recent case of TC Heartland vs Kraft Foods, some large companies (Apple, eBay, IBM, Microsoft, Intel, Walmart) supported the effort to abolish being able to file patent lawsuits in most any venue (a concept which helped lead to East Texas becoming the capital of patent lawsuits in the US). Often you'll have big companies fight eachother in situations like that, as big pharma was on the other side of that, arguing in favor of being able to sue in any venue.
Why would they want to do that? They have the money to play the game... it's startups and disrupters to their business who don't have the money to do it. When the day comes when a startup challenges one of these companies, one of two things will happen: they'll be forced to sell or they'll get sued to oblivion. Just the threat alone keeps startups from operating in their space and getting investors, etc. These companies don't want to compete with you.
I think because a) this is a huge additional investment b) they still have to invest in patents until (if) the system changes c) then the whole playing field is changed, and that's also a huge risk
Status quo is almost always safer if you're one of the biggest.
Nokia did (and probably still does) this as well, plus it gives inventor a share in revenue generated by the patented invention. Some ex-colleagues had made a small fortune out of this back in heydays. No wonder Nokia still holds so much important patents.
Every big corp pays employees to file patents. I don't know that it's a factor for promotions at my employer; certainly not up to Eng 3 or 4, and no manager has told me that I would be promoted if I filed patents.
Ages ago, Robert X. Cringely (an earlier avatar) had a column about just this. It concluded, as I recall, "So weep not for IBM. They may hold a patent on it."
This is comical. It patents the entire system from HTML forms to get the input to prepare the SQL query, to server sending data as formatted HTML back to client.
This has been the bread and butter of PHP for two decades. I'm glad no one tried to enforce this to take away like 99% of the internet.
I wouldn't hold up in any serious suit, but it could be a good patent trolling weapon. Let's hope that when IBM inevitably goes the way of the cuckoo, this does not fall in the wrong hand and/or patent reform has happened by them (fat chance imho).
Software patents have gotten a lot harder to get with a lot more stringent a set of requirements than at the start of the dot com boom, at least as of the Alice ruling in 2014. It could always be reversed, but for now, most of these really bad patents are going to die out/be invalidated and hopefully reduce the power of patent trolls
Irrelevant nitpick: I believe the saying you’re after is ”going the way of the dodo”, referring to the fact that dodo birds are extinct. Cuckoos are still extant.
Chances are they obtained about 500 patents of similar reach per year. This is an arms race, with companies aiming to be able to countersue any patent infringement with hundreds of patent infringements the other way.
You're completely correct. Every big software company encourages their developers to apply for patents on everything they can think of, using cash bonuses and recognition. It's absolutely an arms race, because any company that didn't do this would be standing naked if a patent troll decided to sue. It really demonstrates the ridiculousness of the patent system and how far away it is from the original intentions (even assuming those original intentions are worthwhile, which is dubious).
Patent trolls don't produce anything that can infringe on a patent, so having a patent portfolio does nothing to protect against them.
A patent portfolio helps when a competitor claims their patent is being infringed. A company with a large patent portfolio can cross-license patents and avoid a lawsuit.
Just because a patent had been granted doesn't mean you can enforce it. But you might be able to pressure companies into paying anyway because a law suite would be more expensive even if they win.
The US (and other countries) law are missing IMHO two parts:
- really serve penalties for abusing the patent systems
- serve penalties for abusing the copyright systems
This has been the bread and butter of PHP for two decades
And many other things too, but someone had to be first. I doubt it was IBM but there would have been some elapsed time between TBL inventing HTML and the first time someone dynamically generated it from an RDBMS. That’s the person who could claim prior art.
I did exactly this in 1996 when we implemented a case management system with a web-based frontend. It used a home-grown webserver written in Perl that was talking SQL to a Sybase instance.
And it was definitely not something unique. This project started because I was asking (probably on Usenet) for advice on what GUI framework we should use, and was recommended to build the application using web technologies.
The fact that IBM managed to get a patent on this is just one more of an almost infinite number of examples showing why the patent system is broken.
Did you use an intermediate macro language and a per application macro file that mapped fields from the HTML to SQL on per request basis?
(This patent does not claim presenting SQL result in HTML -- it claims a particular way of mapping between the POST HTML and DB2 SQL using a customized macro language -- referred to as a common namespace in claim 1)
Yes, and after sybperl, DBD::Sybase/DBI became all the rage in the late 90s. The IBM patent is obsceleted at this point, though I still try to see how many lines of code I need to do same thing with perl/sybperl/dbi on other platforms using other languages such scala/mysql.
I know a few, at least one asserted one of their few patents against IBM to force a licensing deal -- reversing the direction of the money to the startup instead of them paying IBM.
If a startup has some decent patents, they get to have a conversation with companies like IBM that come calling. Otherwise, they have to roll over.
Basically, when the IBMs of the world come around demanding a license, you show IBM they are infringing on your patent.
In general patents are business assets or business tools. They are important for valuation, among other things.
It's roughly the military equivalent of the enemy having their artillery emplacements overrun and then turned against their own troops. Size of the respective fighting forces is irrelevant, it's simply a useful tactic. Of course if the overrun emplacements were part of a large, belligerent force agitating a smaller force without cause, there may seem to be a certain justice in using their weapons against them. It doesn't make the subsequent killing "good", but it may help discourage further aggression against strategically disadvantaged but tactically superior forces.
I never understand where patents start and end with the bit they claim to be new. Where is that in the patent document? In this case they’re talking about executing sql and rendering as html. Ok. Fine. Phpmyadmin was already doing that in 1998. But they also talk about these macro files that you’re executing by substituting variables into them. As that the new thing? Are these just stored procedures? I feel like we were already doing that in 1998 too.
What I remember from law school is: let's say you're drafting a patent, and you want it to cover as much as possible without getting invalidated by prior art. So you're going to write some claims, and each claim can stand or fall on its own (each claim could be rejected by the patent office, or invalidated later because of prior art, without invalidating the more specific claims). So first you'll write a series of independent claims, and those will each be as broad as you hope you can get away with ("it's HTML on a computer!"). Having the broad independent claims stand is your best case scenario, because that makes it hard for competitors to work around your patent. But then for each independent claim you'll add dependent claims, which narrow down what you're claiming ("OK, it's HTML on a computer with foo," "OK, it's HTML on a computer with foo and bar"). That's your fallback scenario: maybe "HTML on a computer" gets rejected, and "HTML on a computer with foo" gets rejected, but "HTML on a computer with foo and bar" is original enough to make it through, so you still end up owning something of value. But maybe now that your broad claims are gone, your competitors can avoid your patent by doing "HTML with foo and baz" to accomplish the same thing.
So that's how the game theory works: you're basically leaving money on the table if you don't include some super broad claims at the top. Doesn't cost you anything if those ones don't stick. So we can't just read a patent and assume it actually protects every single broad claim -- but we can't assume it doesn't, either. We won't find out for sure which (if any) claims are actually valid unless there's a lawsuit and a judge or jury has to pick through the prior art and decide whether there are claims in there that are narrow enough to be original.
But here it's where the patent system is broken. Doing conceptually trivial combinations of on itself non patentable thinks should _never_ be patentable, at lest for software but probably for anything. Sure patenting a specific complex mechanism for combining two thinks might be patentable but in case of software this is hardly ever the case, most times its more or less trivial glue code.
So e.g. Face recognition + smartphone + unlock screen might all be patentable by itself. Especially a faceregocnition algorithm which works especially good for smartphone usecase might be patentable. Bu using existing face recognition on a smartphone to unlock the screen shouldn't be patentable. They are all existing components and combining them is conceptually trivial. In the end patents where meant to protect research investments, not random ideas.
Every invention is just a combination of existing things with maybe a new twist somewhere. James Watt wasn't the first person to build a steam engine, he just introduced a separate condenser to an existing design.
It's really hard to find a good line of what should constitute a patentable invention. Personally I think that no software should be patentable, ultimately because I don't think that Mathematics should belong to anybody. But I understand that other people see this differently.
I can still build a machine entirely from off-the shelf parts, connecting them exactly in the ways they're built to connect to each other, and claim to have invented it.
The claims in the issued patent define exactly and only what the patent protects.
During the prosecution of the patent (the back and forth with the USPTO) the claims may be amended as long as there is support for the amendment in the description. The description (generally speaking) cannot be amended without refiling and losing the priority date.
These amendments are usually narrowing the independant claims to avoid prior art - similar to your example. Additional details from the descriptions are added to the claims until the examiner agrees that the prior is overcome.
The independent claims are the broadest, and the dependent claims add additional limitations (more or less) that are often directed optional features.
In this patent, which is pretty good for an old-time software patent, this element:
"(c) substituting the data entered by the user into the HTML input form into a dynamic SQL query using a common name space, wherein the common name space comprises variables found in both the dynamic SQL query and the HTML input form;"
is probably what convinced the examiner to allow the patent.
The patent application was in 1995 (the patent is expired now). Like a lot of (even most of) IBM's generalizable patents, it is and was defensive. (Non-obviousness had gone out the window long before this, and they'd already been bitten by trolls. Basically, they patented everything that wasn't already patented by anyone just to avoid infringement suits. To my knowledge, they never actively protected anything that should have been unpatentable because of obviousness.)
> As the Big Blue crew looked on (without a flicker of emotion), my colleagues--all of whom had both engineering and law degrees--took to the whiteboard with markers, methodically illustrating, dissecting, and demolishing IBM's claims. We used phrases like: "You must be kidding," and "You ought to be ashamed." But the IBM team showed no emotion, save outright indifference. Confidently, we proclaimed our conclusion: Only one of the seven IBM patents would be deemed valid by a court, and no rational court would find that Sun's technology infringed even that one.
> An awkward silence ensued. The blue suits did not even confer among themselves. They just sat there, stonelike. Finally, the chief suit responded. "OK," he said, "maybe you don't infringe these seven patents. But we have 10,000 U.S. patents. Do you really want us to go back to Armonk [IBM headquarters in New York] and find seven patents you do infringe? Or do you want to make this easy and just pay us $20 million?"
This would make for a fascinating book, with the right interviews. Seems like a very thorough case study and a must-read for anyone dealing in the U.S. with potential patent concerns. There are likely some dissonant takeaways, too, and that's always fun.
The important bit is the claims. However, you still have to know the legalese codewords. Every word has a very specific definition. For example, "a plurality of things" explicitly excludes from the claim an implementation where only one "thing" is used.
NAL, but something a patent attorney explained to me once.
It’s more nuanced than that, and it depends on if you’re looking at it from a validity standpoint or an infringement standpoint, and different venues (federal court or the PTAB) have slightly nuanced approaches. For the uninitiated, start by reading the words of the claims as you would source code, not colloquial English. Approach it very analytically, every word has been chosen for a specific reason and effect.
Yep, terminology in legal documents can be quite misleading when interpreted as colloquial language. Something to keep in mind when reading any Legalese.
On the contrary, legal documents are like code - you have to read them exactly as they are worded. They may use complex grammar and obscure vocabulary, but slow down, read every word and pretend it is code. There are no extra words, every "or" and "and" really is a boolean operator that impacts how to interpret a sentence.
If you are a coder, extracting an accurate meaning from legalese should come naturally. Just slow the flippety-flop down, stop trying to read it like a book, and instead read it like you are a compiler.
While there is a code-like aspect to reading legalese, the law isn't as specific as a programming language. No matter how hard you try, legal documents will have ambiguity.
I just read a case law week about whether "or" in a patent claim should be interpreted as OR or XOR.
I've been told by at least two patent lawyers that "and" and "or" are essentially synonymous. If you want to specify "xor" it's good to say "either a foo or a bar but not both a foo and a bar". But why be so specific? "One or both of a foo and a bar" could have broader coverage, presents the opportunity to mislead the competition, and (IANAL) seems to be just as sound even if "both" is actually infeasible.
Claim language such as "determining foo based on x, y, and y" is leaving the door open for a judge to interpret the limitation as requiring "x, y, AND z"
Better language (assuming it is how the thing works) is:
"determining foo based on one or more of x, y, or z"
The strange language in claims (and patents in general) is a response to litigation. Good patent prosecutors (the patent attorneys that draft patents) watch court cases and adjust their claim language accordingly.
Good patent litigators try to tear up or dissect the claim language (as well as everything else...). So patent prosecutors should draft with an eye toward litigation and include language that inoculates a patent from common or obvious attacks.
`every "or" and "and" really is a boolean operator'
In my experience, not being a lawyer, but working with people with legal educations on queries for document review, they didn't generally seem to "get" logical concepts like the idea that precedence of boolean operators matters to interpretation.
Maybe people who went to top tier law schools are better or something.
The new parts are necessarily included in the claims at the end of patent document. However, there's nothing that requires an applicant to specify which elements of a claim are new over the prior art.
How does one developing a product find out if they are infringing a patent?
Apart from the Apple/Samsung patent battle few years ago and to an extent Google/Oracle battle, I don’t remember anything in the tech space leveraging this.
Is there a list of companies that got screwed by giant companies because they unknowingly infringed a patent?
Due to the US patent amt granting all kind of patents which should never have been granted (due to e.g. priority art or triviality of the patent) it's basically impossible today to do anything in tech without braking patents.
For example one person patented the wheel and got the patent granted, or recently I found that some company on zooming in and out on a graph or automatically shutting down computers when they are not used.
Normally large tech companies don't use any of this patents, it's not in their interest to make it obvious how broken the patent system is. But the problem starts once a company starts to fall and now tries to make money no matter what. Or this patents are bought up by patent trolls.
What you would need is called a freedom to operate search and opinion. However, that’s not so much a thing anymore due to the risks involved and the state of patent validity proceedings mostly at the PTAB. And, at the end of the day, you could never know for sure if someone out there wouldn’t have a different opinion than yours and they’d sue you anyways. The system isn’t very efficient.
One of IBM’s most important patents was filed around 1987–I don’t remember the date exactly-it covered the cookie.
Even back then IBM was subject to patent trolls patenting things like using the ctrl key, etc. and then going after IBM. They liked having a huge collection of patents and even disclosed inventions that were not patented but instead published in a publication (I think it was called something like The IBM Invention Disclosure Bulletin) that was available in only a handful of public libraries, like the New York public library. That way if they wanted to use a technique that they had already disclosed they could use these publications of proof of prior art. I filed a few ideas that they said they weren’t interested in that didn’t even qualify for this level of disclosure.
I think that the patents in it's current state (in the US at least and in the software area in particular) are outlived their usefulness. It was an artificial construct to begin with with the goal that small people can invent things and rip some benefits. Now it is a large scale tactical and strategic weapon amassed by large corporations. If followed to the letter small person/company can not do f..k all without breaking some obscure patent's clause. If enforced to the letter the players that are not big enough would not be able to create any meaningful software. And the cost of filing a patent has risen to the point that small person can not really get meaningful patent (speaking from personal experience of trying to get not software related patent in the US).
Welcome to the big leagues. Patents are big part of every mature industry. Software isn't special.
You should see how fierce the patent wars are in the automobile industry, medical devices, electronics, materials science, adhesives, brake pads, throttle cables, fasteners, tooling, construction/building materials, to name a few.
The difference is that software is special compared to electronics, chemistry etc etc
You can't be vague in those fields but in software implementations you can as much as you want. Maybe we should start issuing patents in hairdressing as well.
You need enough definiteness in a disclosure to enable someone of ordinary skill in the art make the invention.
The specific data structures, programming languages, program/application architecture, are generally unimportant (unless they are the invention).
Gadget patents are the same way. They don't have to claim particular fasteners, coatings, materials, dimensions, or the like, unless they are necessary for the invention.
I do not want into "big leagues". I said that the patent system no longer serves its original purpose and it is virtually impossible to write any meaningful piece of software without violating some patent.
> impossible to write any meaningful piece of software without violating some patent.
Even if that were true, the existence of a patent shouldn't necessarily stop someone from infringing that patent. If a startup infringes someone else's patent and makes a profitable business doing so, then they have access to enough money to either fight the validity of the patent or pay a royalty. If the patentee is a non-practicing entity, then it would usually rather have some royalties than fight a lawsuit challenging validity, so there should be plenty of room to negotiate. If the patentee is a large company that wants to exclude competitors and refuses to license, the startup may have patents on improvements that the it could use as leverage in addition to the threat of a lawsuit. Such a dispute might end with an acquisition, which might be a nice exit for the startup.
The exception to this strategy would be patents that are likely difficult to challenge (e.g., foundational patents on new technologies or some drug or chemical patents). Most patents (including software patents) don't fall into that category.
> the existence of a patent shouldn't necessarily stop someone from infringing that patent
I should clarify that I'm not suggesting that anyone knowingly and willfully infringe any patent, because there may be liability for doing so. I'm only suggesting that some entrepreneurs worry about possible infringement far more than they should.
Have a company pay “fee” to the same company registered in another country.
You have to defend your patents if not you can get the state against you. The patents is then not guard against competition.
It quite litteraly is a way around tax in the UK at least. Corporate tax on profits earnt through patents is less (10%) than ordinary corporation tax (19%).
It may look silly now but the patent was first filed only a few months after first Netscape browser was released. Back in 1995. I remember the web in 1994 and 1995. I don’t blame for filing it.
Were you using a specialized macro language sitting in between the form fields and the SQL?
In the claims this is the element:
"(c) substituting the data entered by the user into the HTML input form into a dynamic SQL query using a common name space, wherein the common name space comprises variables found in both the dynamic SQL query and the HTML input form;"
This expired patent is much narrower than just rendering SQL results in HTML. It claims a particular way of mapping form field inputs to SQL using an intermediate macro language and a macro file that is employed per request/post that defines the mapping rules for the request.
