http://www.theserverside.net/news/thread.tss?thread_id=34023

, Robert

Yeah, I saw it too (blogged about it tuesday).

It's Microsoft's patent. Probably to protect the IP on which MBF is founded, which will be their future cashcow.

A plus is that Microsoft never uses patents in offensive ways. Another plus is that there is so much prior art (Toplink (now oracle) is at least 10 years old ), I don't think it will hold up in court.

In the US a few weeks ago on the world news they had a news story about how many patents were out there and what people were trying to patent. As it turns out, many of the items trying to be patented are just ludacris.

I dont understand how someone can patent a concept, such as ORM or something like DTS. These items are not some majical invention. It is a concept, and in my opinion it would be like me trying to put a patent on the theory or relativity. Sure, I should be able to patent a time machine and its sub components, but not the concept.

This industry frustrates me sometimes. ugh.

Exactly.

Here in the Netherlands you can't patent an idea, only an implementation of the idea, in hardware for example. I think that's the only real way to deal with patents, even though I think patents aren't always helping progress of mankind, just greedy companies. For example, who cooked up the idea that a patent is transferable to a lawfirm?

How about those awful personalized menus Microsoft gave us starting a few years ago? I always turn them off, they drive me nuts. Once I went poking around the patent database and I saw a patent from Microsoft for that!!

US patent law is absurd. There's some good articles on it by libertarians (I'm a libertarian), which I could dig up, but what it comes down to is, the patent office makes money by selling patents, so it grants patents for everything. In an ideal world there would be no patents anyway because contract law would protect you. But civil law is so wacky now that even though these patents aren't doing anybody any good, companies feel like they at least grant some protection since contract law is so poorly enforced. Then they get carried away with it. But it's like a cold-war detente. If MS ever tried to enforce these patents against IBM, it would be like Moscow shooting nuclear missiles at us, imagine the response.

MS patents about everything what others would call 'marketing aspects'. As you said, for cold-war protection. There are too many lawfirms out there with patents in their possession, where I think 'you didn't invent that', but they will sue companies over those patents. The sad thing is: because these lawfirms don't do anything besides waiting for a big fish to sue, you can't countersue them for violating your patents, so in a way these cold-war patents are not having that much effect (the 500 million$ patent suit over internet explorer is a good example).