Why I hate software patents: IBM patents trim() | Hacker News Reader

Why I hate software patents: IBM patents trim()

patft.uspto.gov

30 pointsmdasen28 comments

"IBM does X" is pleasing to look at, but remember one person decided to make it happen. One person said "hey, I want to patent this idea" and everybody else got in line to help make it happen.

IBM has a patent culture. It encourages each employee to file as many patents as possible. When you submit a patent internally, you get a one-time bonus. When it goes from the internal lawyers to the patent office, you get another bonus. When your patent is awarded months or years later, you get another one-time bonus. If you file a certain number of patents, you get a certificate/plaque and more money.

(true story) On the internal IBM blogs, I saw someone was frustrated by their email software. Their immediate response? File a patent for how they want it fixed. Their problem? They hit "send" by mistake before the email was complete. Their patent? A yes/no confirmation popup after hitting send.

Another way to look at the "IBM has more patents than god" issue is from a per-employee financial standpoint. Their employees may need extra cash, so they are filing patents as fast as possible.

in my humble opinion, you should be happy IBM patented it because clearly they're not patent trolls and it prevents/prevented patent trolls from patenting the same idea.

in big companies, patents are sort-of like trading cards. they're are used defensively. so, if oracle or someone else came after ibm for a database-related patent, IBM could make a patent trade to prevent expensive action from being taken.

it's the corporate equivalent of a superpowers' arms race. they're designed to be a deterrent and aren't (often) acquired for first strike purposes.

That seems like a dangerous and foolish proposition to me. Just because IBM doesn't seem like a patent troll today, doesn't mean they won't tomorrow.

Not to mention, just like a real arms race... It's not the government officials who are really in danger, it's all of the common people, or in this case, programmers.

if IBM has to resort to being a patent troll we ALL will have other things to worry about

I completely agree (even up-modded you!), but if you corner a rat, watch out.

Patents only last 20 years, and besides that every resource is in theory substitutable anyway, so I wouldn't worry about it.

How would you replace trim? According to the text of the patent any method that removes leading or trailing space would fall under protection of this patent. The only way would be to manually remove spaces character by character every time you ran your query. I definitely don't like the sound of that.

How would you replace trim?

Why would I need to replace trim? Trim existed before the filing date of the application for patent. The patent does not cover trim. Why would one think that the patent does cover trim?

According to the text of the patent any method that removes leading or trailing space would fall under protection of this patent.

No, it wouldn't. The 2. Description of Related Art section states:

Currently, TRIM functions, available in SQL, are used to remove leading and/or trailing space characters from data being presented to a user.

Therefore, merely any method that removes leading or trailing space cannot be what is being claimed in the patent.

Sorry, but IBM is one of the largest patent trolls in the world. You just don't hear about it because they target corporations who don't have an extensive IP portfolio to fight back with and cross license.

Here's what's happened at the company I used to work at and what happens at many other companies:

1) IBM comes and says hey you're violating these 10 patents. Pay up.

2) Targeted company goes, hey we're not. Company spends X amount of money and tons of time to prove that they're not violating the patents.

3) IBM goes, oh ok, yeah you're right. So you're not violating those 10 patents. Well, here's another 10 we think you're violating. Now...we can do this forever or you can just pay us $1M/year and have us go away.

4) Targeted company does cost-benefit analysis of legal fees to continue to fight IBM indefinitely or they can pay this "license" fee. Company decides pays $1M to "license" IBM patents

oh and postscript, Targeted company wises up and decides to build up its own IP portfolio as a defensive measure and fills the patent system with even more useless patents.

Big companies win most of the time when there are lawsuits involved. But obviously we can't make enforcing a patent harder as a function of the size of the inventing company.

It's a tricky question to ensure "fair" treatment of patent settlements.

Clearly patent trolls with silly patents such as the automatic trim()-on-insert should be banished. In fact, I can't think of ever reading about any CS patent that would have actually been useful and truly an idea worth the grant.

On the other hand, were there more burden of proof placed on the inventor's side, this would discriminate small inventors in traditional patentable fields (like mechanical or engineering constructions). Big companies could just "steal" their ideas and count on them being unable to enforce the patent.

I think the way of the future would be just to give up on the illusion of "intellectual 'property'". Patents don't seem to be incentive when it comes to inventing; instead they seem to incentivise commercialisation. However, all smart people I know would invent new things regardless of any monetary reward or lack thereof.

I wonder if the targeted company did do this forever, how long would it be before IBM runs out of patents? Anyone done the math?

IBM's history has shown they are not afraid to use their patent library offensively.

http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/21509.wss

http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-5527642.html

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A0DE3DF133CF...

http://www.engadget.com/2007/12/06/ibm-tries-to-stop-asus-im...

And that was just from a 2 minute Google search.

Notice settlements are called "cross licensing" but only have money going in one direction - towards IBM.

"Help the USPTO find the information relevant to assessing the claims of pending patent applications. Become a community reviewer and improve the quality of patents."

http://www.peertopatent.org/

I've never understood why patents include so much stuff without practical relationship to the idea in question. In this case the patent covers a computer implemented method of automatically removing space characters from data being entered into a database and yet the detailed description includes pages of gibberish like this:

  With reference now to FIG. 3, a block diagram illustrating a data
  processing system is depicted in which the present invention may be
  implemented. Data processing system 300 is an example of a client
  computer. Data processing system 300 employs a peripheral component
  interconnect (PCI) local bus architecture. Although the depicted
  example employs a PCI bus, other bus architectures such as Accelerated
  Graphics Port (AGP) and Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) may be
  used. Processor 302 and main memory 304 are connected to PCI local bus
  306 through PCI bridge 308. PCI bridge 308 also may include an
  integrated memory controller and cache memory for processor
  302. Additional connections to PCI local bus 306 may be made through
  direct component interconnection or through add-in boards. In the
  depicted example, local area network (LAN) adapter 310, Small computer
  system interface (SCSI) host bus adapter 312, and expansion bus
  interface 314 are connected to PCI local bus 306 by direct component
  connection. In contrast, audio adapter 316, graphics adapter 318, and
  audio/video adapter 319 are connected to PCI local bus 306 by add-in
  boards inserted into expansion slots. Expansion bus interface 314
  provides a connection for a keyboard and mouse adapter 320, modem 322,
  and additional memory 324. SCSI host bus adapter 312 provides a
  connection for hard disk drive 326, tape drive 328, and CD-ROM drive
  330. Typical PCI local bus implementations will support three or four
  PCI expansion slots or add-in connectors.

What does any of that have to do with removing whitespace from text strings before they are stored?

The "legalease" is a kind of programming language. Its not human readable. All that garbage is inherited from a parent class.

Patent->technology->computers->text.lets_patent_chomp_and_see_what_happens.

anachronism: starting any patent with "a computer implemented method..."

Errm, according to that what they've patented is not-trim.

Can you clarify, this is what I read: "A computer implemented method of automatically removing space characters from data being entered into a database system comprising ..."

"Hence, the use of TRIM functions when retrieving data from the database system will be obviated."

Right, but my point is they did patent trim() - namely the automatic usage of trim().

The vast majority of patents are just novel applications of existing ideas to a specific domain.

Apple didn't patent the LCD screen, or the touch screen, or even multi-touch. They (presumably) did, however, patent a multi-touch lcd screen used for controlling a cell phone. (This may be a bad example since i don't know what they patented, but you get the idea).

Assuming there's no prior art (which is a big assumption), No-one has implemented an auto-trimming database column before, therefore it's a new process.

Personally I think the patent is ridiculous (there are big problems with the definition of 'novel' with respect to software), but there's a specific reasoning that leads to this.

The patent is for a database column setting which will 'auto-trim' all data. So instead of having to call the trim function every time you insert or update your database this patented setting does it automatically. Hard to believe these things get patents.

To be fair there's been CHAR and VARCHAR for 20 years, but no-one has done what they're proposing. IBM probably make everyone patent everything they do.

Not quite. IBM provides strong incentives to patent inventions. It also makes it very easy for an engineer to do so.

Lest you think this was some triviality that got patented, note that it took 3 of them to invent it. I doubt that any of us could have managed it without the resources of a giant corporation like IBM behind us.

I for one welcome our blue-suited patent-wielding overlords.

The legitimacy of this patent aside - how does IBM think it will benefit from the protection this patent gives?

Just seems like patent cruft than patent misuse.

You hate software patents because some companies abuse them? Do you also hate pain killers because some drug addicts abuse them?

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