4 ms·
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
by peey 6y ago
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.
- 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