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Comment by tsimionescu | Hacker News Reader

Another poster I think put it better: what the patent is describing is essentially building a DNS system for data. Claim 1 describes how DNS forwarders work (the "client" is a DNS client, the "server" is a DNS forwarder, and the "data location server" is a DNS authoritative name server). Claim 10 then describes how a DNS recursive resolver works (the "client" is the rescursive resolver, and the "data location servers" are authoritative name servers). Claims 17 and 18 then essentially describe the full distributed DB that uses this DNS-like mechanism for retrieval.

The sub-claims are just covering minor variations of the implementation, and can safely be ignored in general in any patent.

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IANAL but there was a patent describing a USB-powered vibrator.

While the idea of a vibrator is not new, and the idea of powering devices via USB isn't new either, the combination of these two non-new ideas was new.

The patent was granted, and when someone (not the patent holder) produced a USB-powered vibrator, they were found in a violation of the patent in question.

Similarly, if someone made a patent about "building a DNS system for data", and someone else used that idea to actually build that system, they may be in a violation of the patent. The more claims (or sub-claims) there are, the more specific the innovation was, and now the question is whether the supposed infringement was actually implementing all of the claims of the patent.

That sounds ridiculous to me... By the same logic, I could patent a car that is charged by USB (not very efficient, but eh, it's new !) and then nobody could build a car charged via USB ?

One of the strangest aspects of patents is that it is much easier to get a patent than it is to defend that patent in court.

Many patents are granted by the patent office then revoked by judges.

> I could patent a car that is charged by USB

If you paid the filing dues (a significant sum), and nobody has patented that before, then yes.

> nobody could build a car charged via USB?

Anybody could build a car powered by USB, and you could then sue them for the infringement of your patent. It could then go in many directions, from you becoming very rich, to your patent being invalidated and you found responsible for court fees.

This system is not as ridiculous as it sounds.

>This system is not as ridiculous as it sounds.

It's so not ridiculous that Amazon was able to prevent the entire ecommerce industry from implementing anything even close to a "one click purchase" flow because of a patent. Not because you couldn't see Amazon's source code for the feature, or couldn't come up with your own completely different implementation of the idea, but because as long as you can convince a completely unsophisticated and inexpert jury members that a paragraph of extremely vague text can be read in any way to apply to anyone else's system, you are violating their patent.

Imagine being able to patent addition, or the very concept of a cake, such that nobody could make a product that was bready and/or sweet without paying you a protection fee.

Remember that the US patent office had to expressly ban any patent for "perpetual motion machine", not because it is literally impossible by physical reality, but because they kept granting patents for physically impossible perpetual motion machines

You've correctly identified how patents work, at least in the U.S.

Except for the "non obvious to the practitioner" part.

You missed the part where I filed the patent first, so I am now the one in charge of USB charged cars.

Yes, it is even more complicated than that; I'm just trying to toss out a joke while also pointing out the system is even worse than implied.

Missed opportunity to patent putting a USB-C port in a car...

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