Comment Articles

The patent nuclear weapon

John Carroll ZDNet.com

Published: 29 Aug 2003 18:09 BST

P>Anatomy of a nuclear weapon
I haven't found any articles that cite the actual numbers for the patents used in IBM's countersuit. This article provided the names, however, and using the US Patent Office's online search tool, I narrowed them down to the following patents.

The first one, "Data Compression Method", refers either to patent number 5,010,345, granted in April, 1991, or patent number 4,814,746, granted in March, 1989. In both cases, they detail fairly specific tweaks to data compression.

The second patent, "Method of navigating among program menus using a graphical menu tree" refers to patent number 4,821,211, which was granted in April of 1989. This appears to be a patent on a particular twist on menu layout.

The third patent, "Self-verifying receipt and acceptance system for electronically delivered data objects," refers to patent number 4,953,209 and was granted in August of 1990. This patent appears to be patent on the standard process of downloading executable code through a user interface, which is baffling, to say the least.

The fourth patent, "Method for monitoring and recovery of subsystems in a distributed/clustered system," refers to patent number 5,805,785 and was granted in September of 1998. This patent appears to cover a fairly standard procedure involved in computer clusters.

What bothers me about these patents is that I could see myself easily stumbling into "infringement" in the course of normal software development (and I probably don't need to mention this, but what company that offers software for download is NOT infringing on the third patent?). I come up with lots of constructs for data presentation and/or ways to tailor encryption of data. It would never occur to me, though, to claim that I am the ONLY one allowed to write software that uses the same techniques. That would be like saying I have exclusive rights to build a LEGO house with a sloped roof and a window in each wall.

If we're lucky, IBM will only use these patents to squash the SCO threat. If we're not lucky, the IT world could end up with another Unisys. Unisys probably didn't originally intend to charge a licensing fee for the compression algorithm used in GIF images (a patent that has now expired). In Unisys' case, though, GIFs became extraordinarily popular through the growth of the internet, and some executive at Unisys probably decided that the revenue potential was too big to pass up.