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Patent on displaying SQL data in HTML, granted to IBM in 1998
- peey 6y agoThis 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.
- norswap 6y agoI 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).
- lolinder 6y agoIt's already expired, so no danger at all.
- lrem 6y agoChances 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.
- rwmj 6y agoYou'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).
- jlarocco 6y agoPatent 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.
- auxym 6y agoIf that patent was filed in 98, it expired in 2018.
- mrfusion 6y agoI wonder if lots of bad parents have expired or are expiring soon? I remember reading the most dumb patents on slashdot in the early 2000s so maybe.
- rhacker 6y agoI guess we can all thank the original dot-com boom for creating a bunch of patents a little over 20 years ago! :P
- vikramkr 6y agoSoftware 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
- Cederfjard 6y agoIrrelevant 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. Although you can also ”go cuckoo”, as in crazy.
- norswap 6y agoHaha you're right, thanks! Something was rubbing me the wrong way as I wrote it but I couldn't figure it out.
- dathinab 6y agoJust 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
- goatinaboat 6y agoThis 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.
- pnw_hazor 6y agoPHP didn't use a common namespace (a customizable intervening macro file used to map keywords between the form fields and DB2 SQL).
- lokedhs 6y agoI 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.
- goatinaboat 6y agoPerl that was talking SQL to a Sybase instance I remember Sybperl, since everyone was using Perl for CGI in the 90’s anyway it was a no-brainer to use it for that. Sybperl was released in 1990!
- Bubbadoo 6y agoYes, 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.
- pnw_hazor 6y ago
- aidos 6y agoI 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.
- stan_rogers 6y agoThe 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.)
- slfnflctd 6y agoThis 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.
- ekidd 6y agoIBM is alleged to have have used dubious parents very aggressively back in the day: https://www.forbes.com/asap/2002/0624/044.html https://www.forbes.com/asap/2002/0624/044.html > 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?"
- wolco 6y agoDoes anyone have a good software patent story? Where a small company was able to use for good or to fight off a bigger player.
- unlord 6y agoYou may be interested in reading the license page for the royalty-free Opus audio codec: https://opus-codec.org/license/ https://opus-codec.org/license/ Full disclosure, I am a member of the Xiph.Org Foundation.
- loeg 6y agoImportantly, Xiph.org is a 501(c)(3).
- brlewis 6y agoDoes a crime become good if the victim is big and the perpetrator is small?
- swayvil 6y agoSometimes. The greatest good is our aim here.
- ineedasername 6y agoIt'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.
- pnw_hazor 6y agoI 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.
- jwildeboer 6y agoexpired patent.
- wisecoder 6y agoIBM 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.
- ludamad 6y agoFor comparison, Red Hat does too, but that's redundant now :)
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- rwmj 6y agoEvery big software company does this. It's a ridiculous arms race, but you have to play or risk getting sued to oblivion by a patent troll.
- emidln 6y agoThis 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.
- rhacker 6y agoAt 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.
- amelius 6y agoWhy don't big companies lobby for better patent laws then?
- 6y ago
- pcurve 6y agoIt 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.
- cowmix 6y agoNope, stupid patent. People were rendering SQL results in HTML for at least two years when that patent was filed. When I say people, I mean me. On publicly available websites. :)
- pnw_hazor 6y agoWere 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.
- praveenweb 6y agoHow 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?
- nurettin 6y agoLook for "patent troll" articles. You will find a few dozen unique links just on this website. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=patent%20troll&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
- patentatt 6y agoWhat 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.
- dathinab 6y agoDue 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.
- kerng 6y agoSeems like IBM (patent owned by CISCO now) is officially responsible for inventing SQL injection! There is not mitigation to SQL Injection attack in the patent - didn't read it all word by wors but skimmed it through.
- FpUser 6y agoI 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).
- pnw_hazor 6y agoWelcome 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.
- type0 6y ago> Software isn't special. 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.
- pnw_hazor 6y agoYou 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.
- FpUser 6y ago
- rafaelturk 6y agoAs IBM core revenue continues to decline there is a serious risk that they will become a patent troll.
- pnw_hazor 6y agoIBM has been aggressive with patents for decades.
- punnerud 6y agoIs patents also a way to get around tax? 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.
- adwww 6y agoIt 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%).
- mv4 6y ago"Since 1920, IBM has received more than 140,000 U.S. patents". Let that sink in. Source: https://www.research.ibm.com/patents/#:~:text=Since%201920%2C%20IBM%20has%20received,the%20patents%20awarded%20to%20IBM https://www.research.ibm.com/patents/#:~:text=Since%201920%2....
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- gran_colombia 6y agoEver wonder why the US dominates in the number of patents? This is why.
- todd8 6y agoOne 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.