PG's patent on Continuation Based Web Servers (as used by Arc, Seaside etc)

http://www.google.com/patents?id=WE8GAAAAEBAJ&dq=6205469

by nickb • 18 years ago

42 51 18 years ago

google.com

gojomo• 18 years ago

My god! He's going to sue everyone who answers the Arc Challenge!

It's a trap!

bayareaguy8• 18 years ago

Claims 4, 6, 8 and 9 are pretty specific and from a cursory examination of the current challenge solutions none of them work that way.

Could it be that at the moment the only system to worry about a lawsuit is Arc? Yahoo (not pg) is the patent holder.

mooneater• 18 years ago

And soon it may be held by the Beast.

michaelneale• 18 years ago

Upmodded for "It's a trap" usage.

ijoshua2• 18 years ago

The patent appears to predate PLTaEURXs work.

pius• 18 years ago

"The patent appears to predate PLTaEURXs work."

Boy, that extra character support sure would've come in handy. :P

ijoshua2• 18 years ago

It was an apostrophe, but since Arc doesnaEURXt support Unicode, fuck it.

mattmaroon• 18 years ago

He also appears to have made advances in birdfeeder technology.

http://www.google.com/patents?id=Sl0gAAAAEBAJ&dq=%22paul...

nickb3• 18 years ago

This one's a lot more interesting: http://www.google.com/patents?id=jTkLAAAAEBAJ&dq=%22paul... "Remote web site authoring system and method" how Viaweb works/ed...

staticshock• 18 years ago

My god! He's going to sue everyone who answers the... birds.... uh..

ardit33• 18 years ago

Software Patents are a sham.

Software should be copyrighted, but not patented.

I wonder what would be if a writer could patent story lines: "It is like a like a novelist, patenting all action thrillers, that involve a guy saving a girl, who is kidnaped by the bad guys.

Watch out, any other books that have a bad guy kidnaping the girl, can be infringing this patent."

There are many industries that flourish without the needs of patents. How did we end up in this mess?

nickb3• 18 years ago

Sham or not, they're a reality and we have to deal with it. Just ignoring them is not going to solve anything.

>How did we end up in this mess?

Politics, money and special interest is a dangerous confluence.

anaphoric3• 18 years ago

Actually just ignoring it is probably the best thing to do.

garbowza2• 18 years ago

"One thing I do feel pretty certain of is that if you're against software patents, you're against patents in general." http://www.paulgraham.com/softwarepatents.html

Btw, your writer analogy is a poor one, since prior art exists for that story line and thus it would not be patentable. There are also industries that would collapse without patents (pharmaceuticals for one).

systems2• 18 years ago

Because who would pay for RnD if you can't go exclusive at least for a dozen or so years! Well I hope that someone would, that the human social structure have evolved enough to create all what's necessary for it's survival and that the pharmaceuticals industry wouldn't collapse, it would just restructure and medicines will be cheaper!

The sad truth is, I really believe this would what would've happened!

bayareaguy8• 18 years ago

I assume pg is referring to http://www.gamespot.com/news/6117964.html when he writes

The one example I've found is, embarrassingly enough, Yahoo, which filed a patent suit against a gaming startup called Xfire in 2005. Xfire doesn't seem to be a very big deal, and it's hard to say why Yahoo felt threatened. Xfire's VP of engineering had worked at Yahoo on similar stuff-- in fact, he was listed as an inventor on the patent Yahoo sued over-- so perhaps there was something personal about it. My guess is that someone at Yahoo goofed. At any rate they didn't pursue the suit very vigorously.

I can't help but wonder if pg thinks the same way about software patents now that there is a very real chance that his own patent could be used against him at the whim of someone at a company he's been publically bad-mouthing for some time.

foonamefoo• 18 years ago

Phamaceuticals wouldn't collapse; half of their current expenditures go into advertising, half into research. But that only accounts for half of the actual research costs: the rest mainly comes from the NSF. We could just have the NSF give them a 100% handout and cover all the research.

halo• 18 years ago

I'm not against patents per se (they're a necessary evil, I believe that shortening their length and/or adding a forced licensing clause could improve them), but the problem is that software patents too often do the opposite than what they're intended - stifling innovation in a rapidly evolving market - and the patent system is currently too-often used on things that are likely to be reinvented and become popular independently rather than the actual purpose which is share knowledge with the world in exchange for a temporary monopoly on your invention.

pg6• 18 years ago

Software should be copyrighted, but not patented.

So physical stuff like valves can be patented, but not software? That seems arbitrary. After all, it's usually the design of the valve that contains the invention. What difference does it make if you print one out? If you mean "nothing should be patented," just say that. One could make a case for that argument. But there's nothing special about software.

How did we end up in this mess?

What evidence do you have that we're in a mess? Have you ever been prevented from doing something you wanted to because of patents?

The fact is, for all the noise people make about them, software patents just don't matter much. Large companies accumulate patent portfolios to protect themselves against patent suits. Startups file for them because investors and acquirers are impressed by them. But they don't decide which startups win.

bayareaguy8• 18 years ago

Have you ever been prevented from doing something you wanted to because of patents?

I've had to take software out of production and replace it with non-infringing software.

What evidence do you have that we're in a mess?

EOLAS v Microsoft, Amazon v Barnes&Noble, Sun v NetApp..

ivankirigin• 18 years ago

"Have you ever been prevented from doing something you wanted to because of patents?"

1. Every year at CMU's Human Computer Interaction Institute, it appears someone reinvents something patented though not deployed by Xerox PARC.

An example is a "looking glass" feature for something like photoshop, where you can preview the result of an action like a filter -- or something like that.

From the anecdotes I've heard, PARC just sits on it, doesn't deploy or license it, and acts to block others from using it.

2. SIFT is a new object recognition technique built upon years of research. A recent patent on the best implementation has restricted groups from using the techniques. They grant exclusive licenses on the level of "for all robots in America", but that's pretty useless for a startup, isn't it?

I'll say it: nothing should be patented. Trade secrets, in the literal and legal sense, make much more sense. If a system can be reverse engineered and copied, you don't have a secret, and it isn't in the best interest of society to block copy cats from beating the originator.

The idea that makers wouldn't create due to the fear of competition is just wrong -- though it is the most often used argument to defend patents.

[edit: And another thing: people respect and fear patents, so despite my opinions, I'm going to act in my best interest to acquire any patents possible on my work. My goal is notably against the best interest of society as a whole: create unfair advantages for my company.]

dmoney• 18 years ago

Didn't mean to downvote this. I click randomly sometimes.

Seems that something that doesn't matter shouldn't be legislated. Do patents matter in other industries? If patents drive innovation in some industries, but have no effect on others besides putting money into lawyers' pockets (and out of taxpayers', entrepreneurs', and corporations' pockets), that would be a case against software patents but not all patents.

systems2• 18 years ago

Are software patents evil? Yes, I don't really believe that RnD is software is that much of a big deal, or that costly to justify patents.

For how many years was windows vista tested on real humans before its being release? No, software testers don't count, they ain't real humans!

RyanGWU82• 18 years ago

And these will belong to Microsoft in a few short months...

anaphoric3• 18 years ago

Yawn...

First of all it's not PG's patent. Its Yahoo's.

Second, if anyone ever goes after you on a software patent, celebrate! It means you are a success. It means you have deep enough pockets to be considered worth the trouble.

Third, as much as software patents are a joke, see them for what they are: A little side show for the lawyers and MBAs to leach off the big boys and feel like they are holding important cards. Hackers are wasting time/energy if they get too worked up about software patents.

bayareaguy8• 18 years ago

Patents may be a joke to hackers but they aren't to the investors who fund them.

Of course if you don't need investors for what you're doing in order to be successful then more power to you.

anaphoric3• 18 years ago

Sure, it's OK to pretend that they mean something... If you feel it helps make you look stronger, apply/get patents. Just try not to pay through the nose to do it... be careful with those lawyers.

Just don't worry about stepping on the other guy's patents. They are just paper really.

And as we know in this economy there is a lot of phony paper out there that people just want to call valuable/meaningful.

PG's patent on Continuation Based Web Servers (as used by Arc, Seaside etc)

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