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Patent: Compiler independent bit-field macros
- jacquesm 16y agoActually, I'm happy to hear that. The more ridiculous patents come to the surface the shorter it will hopefully take before patents will be either reformed or abolished.
- campnic 16y agoPatent reads a little different then the comments here are suggesting. He's not patenting bitfields, he is patenting a method of making bitfields perform the same way across compilers. He even uses the term bitfield to describe his invention. Article title is misleading.
- resdirector 16y agoHere, here. It's misleading titles like these that make me not trust Hacker News when a big story breaks. E.g., when I saw through HN that the Dow Jones dropped by 1,000 points, I immediately corroborated with a few other sources, before reading on.
- campnic 16y agoI don't know if its intentionally misleading or just that the majority of people don't know how to read the patent. If you actually look at the claims, the claims include the word bitfield. As a hint to would be patent evaluators, the only part of this document that means anything legally is the claims section. Thats where you can find out what is being legally protected. This patent actually has a lot of good supporting documentation as to why his method is an improvement. You can hate patents, thats OK. Its just important to get that hatred focused on the right target.
- ZeroGravitas 16y agoThere's a list of "references" with links to other patents. I don't know if this patents references them, or vice versa. But one of them is case-insensitive matching: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6675354.html http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6675354.html I just noticed, this is an IBM patent. What are they playing at. Here's the flowchart for this "invention": http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6675354-0-large.jpg http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6675354-0-large.jpg
- wheaties 16y agoLaughable. This would never stand the test of prior-art. I think I'll go patent merge sort...
- jacquesm 16y agoChances are that you'd get it if you clothed it in the appropriate terms. Heck, why settle for merge sort, why not sorting as a whole? "Method for the creation of order from chaos in the memory of a digital computing device".
- lsb 16y agoIsn't that what we all do, every day?
- jacquesm 16y agoThat was sort of the point ;) By making it so broad you could theoretically sue any company.
- michael_dorfman 16y ago...and lose, badly, when they provide "prior art". Just because you are awarded a patent doesn't mean it's enforceable. Over-broad patents get challenged, and struck down.
- jacquesm 16y agoI think you should probably read the rest of the thread.
- michael_dorfman 16y agoI have. In this case, the patent is considerably narrower than the headline would leave one to believe. Even if someone did manage to get a patent granted on something like "bitfields", this would be an annoyance and not a tragedy, as the patent would never hold up-- it would be trivial to produce prior art to invalidate it. I'm all for discussing patent reform, but it's a lot easier to do in terms of specifics. And, in this case, I don't see anything egregious. At least, not yet.
- hackermom 16y agoI ROL'd. add.: oh come on, you bitter, sad downvoters.. this is good satire!
- rick_2047 16y agoThis is actually insane. If I know it correct you cannot patent discoveries. I always find it funny that people are patenting algorithms. Come to think of it, it is indeed a discovery. Even addition has an algorithm (x*n = add x, n number of times). Imagine if someone patents multiplication and his son does not get it in his math class he will just walk up to him and say "Hey dad can you ban my school from teaching multiplication we own it anyways why give it away to everyone?"
- loup-vaillant 16y agoThen, you may want to consider any invention as a discovery: the discovery of a mean to some end. Now, mathematics had this debate a long time ago: some viewed it as something you discover, others viewed it as something you build. Those two philosophies spur different ways of doing mathematics. Those who viewed mathematics as being build, for instance, tended to reject the `∀P ¬¬P = P` principle. Also note that neither side really won the argument. Regarding patents, the two philosophies obviously differ: the discoverers will unconditionally reject patents, while the builders could embrace it. So, for your argument to work, you'd first have to convince everyone that math is indeed discovered.
- _delirium 16y agoSomewhat less ad-filled link: http://www.google.com/patents?id=kycWAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract http://www.google.com/patents?id=kycWAAAAEBAJ&printsec=a...
- pmccool 16y ago> Filing Date: 12/10/2001 I thought of patenting well-known, widely-used techniques (e.g. doubly linked lists) as something that happened back in the 80s and 90s, but it seems I was wrong. They cannot honestly believe this will stand up to scrutiny, and I understand that filing a patent isn't free, so what on earth are they hoping to accomplish?
- rick_2047 16y agoTheir fifteen minutes of fame? (at least in there peer groups) Edit: changed Their to There (sorry grammar nazis)
- RiderOfGiraffes 16y agoForgive me - I occasionally find English difficult, but it took me ages to parse that. I assume s/there/their/g ??
- username3 16y agoI assume s/the/The/g ??
- RiderOfGiraffes 16y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry%27s_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry%27s_law I should perhaps, at the risk of being more correct but harder to understand, have written "s/here/heir/g" The original has now been changed, although not in the way it is stated, but an error remains, as is so often the case, and no doubt will be in this comment. My point was serious. Sometimes I have real difficulty in understanding things that have such grammatical oddities, so much so that I spend more time decoding what must have been intended than I spend understanding the point being made. I'm getting to the point where if I don't understand something because the grammar or spelling is "odd" then I move on. The author has lost a reader, for better of for worse. There is too much to read, and a reader's attention is difficult to get. Don't discard it lightly. Yes, many people have English as a second, third or even fourth language, and all credit to them. But there is a trade-off to be made. Written once, read many times (you would hope). Make sure it's easy to read. This equates nicely with writing code. Take more time to write it more clearly so that later readers (which may include you!) will be able to understand it. This is a principle we all know, and we all know we should apply. It applies equally to the written word as to the program.
- Debianero 16y agoSoftwar patents are absurds and broke the system completly More info at http://patentabsurdity.com/ http://patentabsurdity.com/
- lightbeingsds 16y agoCant we somehow find the named inventer on social networks such as fb and linkedin and maintain a list like dirty phone book?
- dctoedt 16y agoGotta read the _claims_ before judging the patent. Here's something I posted last month explaining how claims are like AND statements -- if even one element of a particular claim is missing from a method or device, then the claim doesn't cover it: http://www.ontechnologylaw.com/2010/04/how-patent-claims-work-a-variety-of-different-and-statements-all-ord-together/ http://www.ontechnologylaw.com/2010/04/how-patent-claims-wor...
- pmiller2 16y agoI don't read patents, on principle.