Microsoft Patents Reading 20 Records At A Time
from the wonderful dept
theodp writes "On Thursday, the USPTO disclosed that Microsoft has gone back to the patent trough seeking to extend its patent for a System and method for maintaining a user's state within a database table, an 'invention' that consists of retrieving the previous or next 20 records from a database in response to 'previous' or 'next' buttons. Perhaps the USPTO could take a gander at this 1996 COBOL/DB2 program, which implements Microsoft's 2004 'invention'. "
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1996?
I've said it before: Some company is going to patent something really basic, like the for loop, and then proceed to hold the entire U.S. economy hostage, and by the time the courts work it all out and people get serious about Patent reform the stock market will be down 3000 points and half the software developers in the country will be out of work.
Just say no to the USPTO rubber stamp.
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Re: 1996?
I'm not a patent lawyer by any means, but it seems to me that given how broken the system has become, the ability to challenge patents (pending or otherwise) should be opened up and that might reduce some of the worst abuses.
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Hm... patents...
And then they'll sue Sybase for infringing on the patent.
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unbelievable
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