Ridiculus patents.
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http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/5950191.html
I think the owner of this patent missed the point of linked lists.There are plent of other interesting patents on linked lists. There is one for a technique to find the "head" of a linked list.
I thought that one of the requirements for a patent is that your process couldn't be self-evident.
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I like the Bizarre Patents sidebar on that page. A pillow+umbrella? Why didn't I think of that? I'd be rich...
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The problem is that the patent examiner doesn't know state of the art in all fields, so to them this might well not be self-evident. Sad, isn't it?
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What he's describing is commonly refered to as one (possible, and pretty much self-evident) implementation of an associative array, or rather, a hash table, if you like. WOW. I didn't know I'd have to pay royalties for using one of the P-language's hash tables.
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20 years ago it was very difficult to get a patent. You'd send in your application and it would always be rejected and you'd go over it and maybe on the fifth try it would be accepted.
Now you can get a patent for just about anything. Not much checking seems to go on. It's up to you to defend the patent in court if it's challenged. Whichever side has the most persuasive "experts" will prevail.
Penn Jillette has a patent. As far as I know it's a non-ridiculous, novel, useful and non-obvious idea. Search for it. Warning: it is NSFW (Not Safe For Work). But evidently it was Safe For The Patent Office.
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[quote user="newfweiler"]
20 years ago it was very difficult to get a patent. You'd send in your application and it would always be rejected and you'd go over it and maybe on the fifth try it would be accepted.
Now you can get a patent for just about anything. Not much checking seems to go on. It's up to you to defend the patent in court if it's challenged. Whichever side has the most persuasive "experts" will prevail.
Penn Jillette has a patent. As far as I know it's a non-ridiculous, novel, useful and non-obvious idea. Search for it. Warning: it is NSFW (Not Safe For Work). But evidently it was Safe For The Patent Office.
[/quote]
http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6681419.html
some of this crap should be outlawed!
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[quote user="newfweiler"]
20 years ago it was very difficult to get a patent. You'd send in your application and it would always be rejected and you'd go over it and maybe on the fifth try it would be accepted.
Now you can get a patent for just about anything. Not much checking seems to go on. It's up to you to defend the patent in court if it's challenged. Whichever side has the most persuasive "experts" will prevail.
Penn Jillette has a patent. As far as I know it's a non-ridiculous, novel, useful and non-obvious idea. Search for it. Warning: it is NSFW (Not Safe For Work). But evidently it was Safe For The Patent Office.
[/quote]
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[quote user="mrsticks1982"]
http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6681419.html
some of this crap should be outlawed!
[/quote]
If that's your attitude, we may as well outlaw patents alltogether, because that's the exact sort of banal inventions patents were created to protect. It's not amazingly useful or marketable, but it's not self-evident if you see a bathroom stall door that it should have a headrest. Except that it's likely been patented at some point in the past, by now.
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Why do you folk think we fought against software patenting in europe? Software does not need patenting. Licences and author ownership are enough.
And yes, the patent office in US is accepting anything, because they get money for each patent, be it a valid patent or not. Up to courts to decide it, they don't even do anymore the mandatory researchs to see if there was an already existing patent / known process for the proposed patent. They just accept and get the money!
