Patent: Compiler independent bit-field macros | Hacker News Reader

Patent: Compiler independent bit-field macros

freepatentsonline.com

47 pointscodesink38 comments

Patent reads a little different then the comments here are suggesting. He's not patenting bitfields, he is patenting a method of making bitfields perform the same way across compilers. He even uses the term bitfield to describe his invention. Article title is misleading.

Here, here. It's misleading titles like these that make me not trust Hacker News when a big story breaks. E.g., when I saw through HN that the Dow Jones dropped by 1,000 points, I immediately corroborated with a few other sources, before reading on.

I don't know if its intentionally misleading or just that the majority of people don't know how to read the patent. If you actually look at the claims, the claims include the word bitfield. As a hint to would be patent evaluators, the only part of this document that means anything legally is the claims section. Thats where you can find out what is being legally protected. This patent actually has a lot of good supporting documentation as to why his method is an improvement. You can hate patents, thats OK. Its just important to get that hatred focused on the right target.

Actually, I'm happy to hear that. The more ridiculous patents come to the surface the shorter it will hopefully take before patents will be either reformed or abolished.

Gotta read the _claims_ before judging the patent.

Here's something I posted last month explaining how claims are like AND statements -- if even one element of a particular claim is missing from a method or device, then the claim doesn't cover it: http://www.ontechnologylaw.com/2010/04/how-patent-claims-wor...

I don't read patents, on principle.

There's a list of "references" with links to other patents. I don't know if this patents references them, or vice versa. But one of them is case-insensitive matching:

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6675354.html

I just noticed, this is an IBM patent. What are they playing at.

Here's the flowchart for this "invention":

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6675354-0-large.jpg

Laughable. This would never stand the test of prior-art. I think I'll go patent merge sort...

Chances are that you'd get it if you clothed it in the appropriate terms. Heck, why settle for merge sort, why not sorting as a whole?

"Method for the creation of order from chaos in the memory of a digital computing device".

Isn't that what we all do, every day?

That was sort of the point ;)

By making it so broad you could theoretically sue any company.

...and lose, badly, when they provide "prior art".

Just because you are awarded a patent doesn't mean it's enforceable. Over-broad patents get challenged, and struck down.

I think you should probably read the rest of the thread.

I have.

In this case, the patent is considerably narrower than the headline would leave one to believe.

Even if someone did manage to get a patent granted on something like "bitfields", this would be an annoyance and not a tragedy, as the patent would never hold up-- it would be trivial to produce prior art to invalidate it.

I'm all for discussing patent reform, but it's a lot easier to do in terms of specifics. And, in this case, I don't see anything egregious. At least, not yet.

And if you could sue based on the title of your patent, that might mean something.

Hrm.

I think I should submit an application for "Method for mechanically solving all problems which are in principle computable."

Actually, that's a really good point.

What if Alan Turing had patented the 'Turing Machine', would we be where we are today in computing or would we be stuck somewhere in the 70's?

Actually, we're not even as far as we got in the 70's in research labs. (Mainstream-wise)

I vote for "where we are today."

A (hypothetical) US patent on the Turing Machine would have stopped any attempts to build a mechanical device to Turing's Specifications (like this one: http://aturingmachine.com/index.php) for a period of 20 years.

It wouldn't stop anyone from building a device that is computationally equivalent to a Turing Machine; it wouldn't stop anyone from using the abstract notion of a Turing Machine as an intellectual device.

In short, a patent would have had no practical effect at all.

Now, let's imagine another alternative: one where Turing invented the Turing Machine, but chose not to publish it, as he was afraid of some better-financed competitor learning his "trade secrets" and exploiting the device before he could implement it himself. Where would we be then?

Patents are a trade-off. The inventor gets a monopoly for a limited period of time, in exchange for the idea being passed into the public domain after the monopoly expires. It's not a perfect system by any means, but it's not easy to dismiss out of hand.

I don't know--Alonzo Church might have a claim, but a digital computer made by anyone else is obviously derivative and covered by a well-written patent claim.

Ideally, you should figure out how to patent patent trolling.

Already been done (seriously).

Can someone still patent the meta-patent?

actually someone did think of that :)

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/10/halliburton_patent/

Indeed. Since C has had built-in syntax for bitfields since (I think) the 70's, if such a patent ever were valid, it would have long expired by now.

Bitfield functionality and related operations are even incorporated in many old CISC processors. The 680x0 family for instance, starting from the 68020 and up, released in 1984, has several opcodes for advanced bitfield manipulation of data/address registers as well as memory.

> Filing Date: 12/10/2001

I thought of patenting well-known, widely-used techniques (e.g. doubly linked lists) as something that happened back in the 80s and 90s, but it seems I was wrong.

They cannot honestly believe this will stand up to scrutiny, and I understand that filing a patent isn't free, so what on earth are they hoping to accomplish?

A patent for a triply (or more) linked list was granted in 2006: http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/7028023.html

Their fifteen minutes of fame? (at least in there peer groups)

Edit: changed Their to There (sorry grammar nazis)

Forgive me - I occasionally find English difficult, but it took me ages to parse that.

I assume s/there/their/g ??

I assume s/the/The/g ??

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry%27s_law

I should perhaps, at the risk of being more correct but harder to understand, have written "s/here/heir/g"

The original has now been changed, although not in the way it is stated, but an error remains, as is so often the case, and no doubt will be in this comment.

My point was serious. Sometimes I have real difficulty in understanding things that have such grammatical oddities, so much so that I spend more time decoding what must have been intended than I spend understanding the point being made. I'm getting to the point where if I don't understand something because the grammar or spelling is "odd" then I move on. The author has lost a reader, for better of for worse.

There is too much to read, and a reader's attention is difficult to get. Don't discard it lightly. Yes, many people have English as a second, third or even fourth language, and all credit to them. But there is a trade-off to be made. Written once, read many times (you would hope). Make sure it's easy to read.

This equates nicely with writing code. Take more time to write it more clearly so that later readers (which may include you!) will be able to understand it. This is a principle we all know, and we all know we should apply. It applies equally to the written word as to the program.

Softwar patents are absurds and broke the system completly

More info at http://patentabsurdity.com/

Somewhat less ad-filled link: http://www.google.com/patents?id=kycWAAAAEBAJ&printsec=a...

This is actually insane. If I know it correct you cannot patent discoveries. I always find it funny that people are patenting algorithms. Come to think of it, it is indeed a discovery. Even addition has an algorithm (x*n = add x, n number of times). Imagine if someone patents multiplication and his son does not get it in his math class he will just walk up to him and say "Hey dad can you ban my school from teaching multiplication we own it anyways why give it away to everyone?"

Then, you may want to consider any invention as a discovery: the discovery of a mean to some end.

Now, mathematics had this debate a long time ago: some viewed it as something you discover, others viewed it as something you build. Those two philosophies spur different ways of doing mathematics. Those who viewed mathematics as being build, for instance, tended to reject the `∀P ¬¬P = P` principle.

Also note that neither side really won the argument.

Regarding patents, the two philosophies obviously differ: the discoverers will unconditionally reject patents, while the builders could embrace it. So, for your argument to work, you'd first have to convince everyone that math is indeed discovered.

Cant we somehow find the named inventer on social networks such as fb and linkedin and maintain a list like dirty phone book?

I ROL'd.

add.: oh come on, you bitter, sad downvoters.. this is good satire!

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