6 ms·

I remember trolling the linked list patent people 10+ years ago. I sent them an email saying my software made extensive uses of linked lists and it had come to

I remember trolling the linked list patent people 10+ years ago. I sent them an email saying my software made extensive uses of linked lists and it had come to my attention that they had patented them. They sent me to their legal department to arrange an agreement. Insane. I wonder how influxdb et al will receive this news. Here is the list of people who should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves: Lin; Jerry (Latham, NY), Aggour; Kareem Sherif (Niskayuna, NY), Courtney; Brian Scott (Naperville, IL), Interrante; John Alan (Scotia, NY), LaComb; Christina Ann (Schenectady, NY), Mathur; Sunil (East Walpole, MA), McConnell; Christopher Thomas (Latham, NY), Snell; Quinn (Salem, UT)

dozzie 11y ago
Pretty much in no way whatsoever. RRDtool as a prior art example.
- kbody 11y ago
  kdb as well, I would imagine them having some kind of patent.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- thanatropism 11y ago
  So I don't know the first thing about software patents, but most central banks (including the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, etc.) -- offer web interfaces for manipulating and retrieving economic time-series (say, taking logarithms, adjusting for inflation or PPP, etc). Does this count as "prior art"? The European Council also has a large, useful system called Eurostat.
- moron4hire 11y ago
  Unfortunately, USPTO only considers other patents or academic papers as prior art.
  - rch 11y ago
    RRDTool: Logging and Graphing. J Sellens - USENIX Annual Technical Conference, General Track, 2006 The GE patent pertains to metadata indexing and query resolution against a distributed block store, so RRDTool doesn't really apply anyway. Maybe something using HDF5 hyperslabs on a parallel distributed file system would though.
  - davelnewton 11y ago
    Are you sure? I've been involved in several instances where demonstrable systems were enough.
    - moron4hire 11y ago
      Sorry, that was just what two different patent officers told me. If they were wrong, I wouldn't be surprised.
  - chollida1 11y ago
    Thankfully that is incorrect. http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2010/10/02/what-is-prior-art/id=12677/ http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2010/10/02/what-is-prior-art/id=12...
danieltillett 11y ago
While I in no way agreeing with this decision why are these people responsible for the terrible decision of the USPTO? They just get to apply for a patent, not issue one. The employee(s) at the USPTO that approved this patent are the ones that should be ashamed.
- jarcane 11y ago
  Because flooding the USPTO with an unending flow of bogus patents are partly why those same patents get approved. They're taking part of a system that takes advantage of an underfunded and understaffed agency in order to profit from it in the long term, knowing that they will get away with it for years and be able to milk millions through the courts long before anyone big enough shuts them down. Patent trolling effectively begets more patent trolling, and everyone partaking of it should indeed be ashamed of themselves.
  - danieltillett 11y ago
    The USPTO is a profit center for the US government. Every extra patent submitted reduces the amount of tax everyone else has to pay. If the USPTO is approving bogus patents then should not the effort be on solving this rather than stopping people applying?
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - vonmoltke 11y ago
      No, it isn't. Look at their budget[1]; very little money enters or leaves the office. The billions collected in the patent and trademark process are all spent on the patent and trademark process. [1] http://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/documents/fy16pbr.pdf http://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/documents/fy16pbr.p...
      - danieltillett 11y ago
        The most interesting thing about the USPTO report is the decline in patent applications and hence revenue. They have gone from making profits year to year to making a loss last year. It seems people have realised the lack of value of most patents. If people stop putting in bogus patents applications the US tax payer is going to have to start paying to support the USPTO. Lets hope with less applications coming in that the staff at the USPTO have more time to stop these dubious patents being issued.
davelnewton 11y ago
Bear in mind that sometimes the people on a patent listing aren't in favor of the idea being patented. A company I worked for started down the patent road for some processor emulation stuff I worked on; my name would have been on the patent even though I (a) didn't think it was patentable, and (b) didn't think it should be patented. Because of the company's rules my name needed to be on the patent despite my objections.
- phkahler 11y ago
  >> Because of the company's rules my name needed to be on the patent despite my objections. Then you had the ability to stop it.
  - davelnewton 11y ago
    Even if I had quit my name would have been on the patent. I'm interested in hearing how I could have stopped it once the process started.
    - davelnewton 11y ago
      (Without changing my name.)
    - phkahler 11y ago
      >> Even if I had quit my name would have been on the patent. I'm interested in hearing how I could have stopped it once the process started. Then you'd be a patent owner and could sue for infringement. OTOH you probably agreed to sell them all your IP for $1 or something when you hired in.
      - bengali3 11y ago
        >you probably agreed to sell them all your IP for $1 or something when you hired in usually a condition of employment. FMI see Assignment of Inventions clause - all companies should have employees sign before hiring.
      - 11y ago
throwawaykf05 11y ago
Trolling aside, the linked list patent doesn't cover what we think of as linked lists. We've had this conversation before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8231954 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8231954 I don't see many folks here who've actually read the claims of this patent and analyzed them for validity. For all we know, this could be a legit difference over the art. But hey, claims are hard, let's go shopping. Or shame people, whatever. If people want some chance of expert analysis, they should submit this to askpatents.com
- easytiger 11y ago
  The uniqueness of a variant on a linked list which I imagine many people have reinvented with variance over the years, is not important. These debates are meaningless because creating a system penalising people for creating something that solves their own problems with no external reference is being made a crime and hurting business. I myself have worked for companies who have had to spend years in legal disputes for trolls. It has a real cost. These people are a cancer and this is a tax on abstract thought.
  - throwawaykf05 11y ago
    1. This patent is on a variation that, as I mentioned in my comment, is very unlikely to ever be infringed when "people solve their own problems". Really, if you can think of a problem that that linked-list problem solves, I'd be very interested in knowing. 2. There is no tax on abstract thought. There is only a dispute if you make, use or sell infringing products. You are free to think whatever abstract thoughts you want. Given the vast majority of patents are a) highly specific and b) unlikely to be infringed anyway, it's unlikely any of your "abstract" thoughts turn into infringing products. Do you know of anything you've developed that has ever been the precise thing that infringed a specific patent?
pauldix 11y ago
InfluxDB CEO here. I've already forwarded to our lawyers to ask. Reading through the patent there are some key differences between what they describe and what we built.
- easytiger 11y ago
  Your probably fine but only because this is a company with a business. They aren't an IP litigation based business who would use it against you. The idea of incorporating business in north america frightens me. ITTP will make this a global problem.

dozzie 11y ago

Pretty much in no way whatsoever. RRDtool as a prior art example.

kbody 11y ago
kdb as well, I would imagine them having some kind of patent.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
thanatropism 11y ago
So I don't know the first thing about software patents, but most central banks (including the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, etc.) -- offer web interfaces for manipulating and retrieving economic time-series (say, taking logarithms, adjusting for inflation or PPP, etc). Does this count as "prior art"? The European Council also has a large, useful system called Eurostat.
moron4hire 11y ago
Unfortunately, USPTO only considers other patents or academic papers as prior art.
- rch 11y ago
  RRDTool: Logging and Graphing. J Sellens - USENIX Annual Technical Conference, General Track, 2006 The GE patent pertains to metadata indexing and query resolution against a distributed block store, so RRDTool doesn't really apply anyway. Maybe something using HDF5 hyperslabs on a parallel distributed file system would though.
- davelnewton 11y ago
  Are you sure? I've been involved in several instances where demonstrable systems were enough.
  - moron4hire 11y ago
    Sorry, that was just what two different patent officers told me. If they were wrong, I wouldn't be surprised.
- chollida1 11y ago
  Thankfully that is incorrect. http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2010/10/02/what-is-prior-art/id=12677/ http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2010/10/02/what-is-prior-art/id=12...

danieltillett 11y ago

While I in no way agreeing with this decision why are these people responsible for the terrible decision of the USPTO? They just get to apply for a patent, not issue one. The employee(s) at the USPTO that approved this patent are the ones that should be ashamed.

jarcane 11y ago
Because flooding the USPTO with an unending flow of bogus patents are partly why those same patents get approved. They're taking part of a system that takes advantage of an underfunded and understaffed agency in order to profit from it in the long term, knowing that they will get away with it for years and be able to milk millions through the courts long before anyone big enough shuts them down. Patent trolling effectively begets more patent trolling, and everyone partaking of it should indeed be ashamed of themselves.
- danieltillett 11y ago
  The USPTO is a profit center for the US government. Every extra patent submitted reduces the amount of tax everyone else has to pay. If the USPTO is approving bogus patents then should not the effort be on solving this rather than stopping people applying?
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - vonmoltke 11y ago
    No, it isn't. Look at their budget[1]; very little money enters or leaves the office. The billions collected in the patent and trademark process are all spent on the patent and trademark process. [1] http://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/documents/fy16pbr.pdf http://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/documents/fy16pbr.p...
    - danieltillett 11y ago
      The most interesting thing about the USPTO report is the decline in patent applications and hence revenue. They have gone from making profits year to year to making a loss last year. It seems people have realised the lack of value of most patents. If people stop putting in bogus patents applications the US tax payer is going to have to start paying to support the USPTO. Lets hope with less applications coming in that the staff at the USPTO have more time to stop these dubious patents being issued.

davelnewton 11y ago

Bear in mind that sometimes the people on a patent listing aren't in favor of the idea being patented. A company I worked for started down the patent road for some processor emulation stuff I worked on; my name would have been on the patent even though I (a) didn't think it was patentable, and (b) didn't think it should be patented. Because of the company's rules my name needed to be on the patent despite my objections.

phkahler 11y ago
>> Because of the company's rules my name needed to be on the patent despite my objections. Then you had the ability to stop it.
- davelnewton 11y ago
  Even if I had quit my name would have been on the patent. I'm interested in hearing how I could have stopped it once the process started.
  - davelnewton 11y ago
    (Without changing my name.)
  - phkahler 11y ago
    >> Even if I had quit my name would have been on the patent. I'm interested in hearing how I could have stopped it once the process started. Then you'd be a patent owner and could sue for infringement. OTOH you probably agreed to sell them all your IP for $1 or something when you hired in.
    - bengali3 11y ago
      >you probably agreed to sell them all your IP for $1 or something when you hired in usually a condition of employment. FMI see Assignment of Inventions clause - all companies should have employees sign before hiring.
    - 11y ago

throwawaykf05 11y ago

Trolling aside, the linked list patent doesn't cover what we think of as linked lists. We've had this conversation before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8231954 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8231954 I don't see many folks here who've actually read the claims of this patent and analyzed them for validity. For all we know, this could be a legit difference over the art. But hey, claims are hard, let's go shopping. Or shame people, whatever. If people want some chance of expert analysis, they should submit this to askpatents.com

easytiger 11y ago
The uniqueness of a variant on a linked list which I imagine many people have reinvented with variance over the years, is not important. These debates are meaningless because creating a system penalising people for creating something that solves their own problems with no external reference is being made a crime and hurting business. I myself have worked for companies who have had to spend years in legal disputes for trolls. It has a real cost. These people are a cancer and this is a tax on abstract thought.
- throwawaykf05 11y ago
  1. This patent is on a variation that, as I mentioned in my comment, is very unlikely to ever be infringed when "people solve their own problems". Really, if you can think of a problem that that linked-list problem solves, I'd be very interested in knowing. 2. There is no tax on abstract thought. There is only a dispute if you make, use or sell infringing products. You are free to think whatever abstract thoughts you want. Given the vast majority of patents are a) highly specific and b) unlikely to be infringed anyway, it's unlikely any of your "abstract" thoughts turn into infringing products. Do you know of anything you've developed that has ever been the precise thing that infringed a specific patent?

pauldix 11y ago

InfluxDB CEO here. I've already forwarded to our lawyers to ask. Reading through the patent there are some key differences between what they describe and what we built.

easytiger 11y ago
Your probably fine but only because this is a company with a business. They aren't an IP litigation based business who would use it against you. The idea of incorporating business in north america frightens me. ITTP will make this a global problem.