Popular (& Common Sense) Y2k Fix Patented

GnrcMan writes "According to this news.com article, "windowing", a method of fixing Y2K bugs where there is a window (IE 00-39) of years recognized as being 20xx years, has been patented by McDonnell-Douglas. They are now threatening to sue Fortune 500 companies using this popular (and common sense) technique." The years not updated are considered to be 19xx for those systems. *sigh* I love patents. Honest. Really.

This is an example of a patent system failure

This is unfortunant, because this is the patent system breaking down. The idea behind the patent system is that, to encourage individuals to publish their knowledge and advance the nation's technology base, we grant them a short term monopoly. The old 17 year (at one point I think it was shorted) patent was a short period of time in the lifetime of an invention, but the new 20 year from time of filing period is sometimes too long.

For computer technology, 20 years is silly. For this, it is rediculous. Society gets NOTHING from this publishing. Wow, you mean in 2019 we can all use, royalty free, windowing for fixing dates? Freaking retarded. Any invention that is of short useful duration (less than the patenting time) should not be eligable for patenting. They should have to protect it via trade secret. Society gets nothing.

I wouldn't worry too much. I'm sure that someone did something similar to deal with a 1 byte year (that would have a problem at the end of the decade) and will be able to show prior art. I'm sure that some has written SOMETHING that interprets certain 2 digit dates as 19xx and others as 20xx, so this isn't new and novel...

The patent system is not a bad idea, it is just being implemented poorly. We aren't getting benefits out of patent protection. I think that patent protection is fundamentally a good thing, but it should be reserved for REALLY new and novel ideas, not obvious, stupid ones.

Alex

Here's a patent...

Hmmmm, the US patent office appear to be accepting common-sense solutions to common problems...

Here's one:

An apparatus for firebombing the US patent office.

I should also patent the use of the phrase "patent this" in conjunction with any rude gesture.

Regarding prior art and patents in general.

I wrote this a while ago about the Amazon patent. I have inserted new comments regarding this even more obvious patent...

I was reading through the transcript of a public hearing on prior art [uspto.gov]. It sounds like when a patent is submitted people look for prior art in current patent databases (including some foreign databases). They also try to review what they call "non-patent literature" (NPL). This information consists of abstracts from "technical journals" and, if needed, an "information specialist" can assist the person in researching prior art. They did mention that in the field of computers the NPL databases may or may not contain evidence of prior art.

In the public hearing it was stated that there is a law "so-called Rule 56, which requires that that material prior art, of which the applicant is aware, be disclosed to the Office." It was said that they understand that it may be hard to comply to this rule. I looked through the patent but I could not find any references to prior art. Maybe someone else knows where these types of things are posted (if they are disclosed)? It was said that most patent submissions include (on average) about 4 documents of prior art.

In the transcript Keith Stephens nicely explains the need to disclose all prior art... It would be interesting to know how much prior art Amazon.com submitted for this "1-Click" patent.

So it seems even if there is prior art that this does not stop it from being patented if it is "sufficiently different" (see below). So exactly what role does prior art play in the patent process then?

From the excellent document What can be patented [uspto.gov] it states that abstract ideas (read: windowing for the Y2K problem) are not patentable. So if "buying things remotely with one action" is an abstract idea, then the key in Amazon's patent must be the interaction between the client, server, and "communication medium" as well as supporting technologies (ex. read in the patent about combining single orders into one order: "expedited order selection"). So it may be that these less abstract ideas are enforceable, but then again at the top of the document the "claims" that were made were very general. How is the idea of "windowing" not abstract and how can the person even prove he thought of the idea. I was reading through an IBM pamphlet on Y2k and it stated that they had been doing research about Y2K for years, including the windowing technique...

From the same document referenced in the above paragraph it also states that "The subject matter sought to be patented must be sufficiently different from what has been used or described before that it may be said to be nonobvious to a person having ordinary skill in the area of technology related to the invention." So another question I pose is when did Amazon "invent" this type of ordering system? Surely "sufficiently similiar" systems could be found before Amazon "invented" its ordering system. What about the windowing system?? I'm sure any decent programmer could have thought of that one... perhaps we need a few programmers in higher political places (alas, programming and politics don't mix well -- and I rather like it that way).

Notice also that the [Amazon] patent states that "one skilled in the art" will appreciate that the patent also covers other ordering mechanisms such as email. This is incredulous... this means that the patent convers all automated email-based order processing systems!

On a side note, on the US Patent and Trademark Office's web site [uspto.gov] in the definition [uspto.gov] of a patent they state that "US patent grants are effective only within the US, US territories, and US possessions." How exactly can this relate to the internet? What if a U.S. company contracts with a foreign (ex. European) company to create an e-commerce web site that remembers users credit cards and allows buying an item with one click of a button. Would the patent affect the web site because a U.S. company sponsered the development of the site OR would it not be under the umbrella of the patent since it was hosted in the foreign company?

The economy has already been hurt by people afraid of Y2K (although arguably it has created more jobs temporarily etc), so why must someone come and try to create damage after the fact? Has anyone actually found the patent online? It would make for very interesting reading. Perhaps we should start writing Congress about these patents, eh?

The issues of patents is a tough one, and hopefully we can work through (around) situations like this Amazon patent and somehow manage to let innovation flourish still. The idea of (software) patents is really against the entire concept backing Open Source. The real question is, what should be done about it?

-Kevin

How do you enforce this patent?

Setting aside the stupidity of granting this patent for a moment, it seems to me that this is a particularly hard patent to enforce. If I were a large corporation and McDonnel-Douglas came to me asking to see the code running my in house systems, wouldn't I just laugh at them? Can they somehow legally gain access to the code of every company that might have conveivably fixed a Y2K bug to see how it was done? Some programs are out in the world for anyone to examine, sure, but an awful lot of Y2K non-compliant code is tied up in ancient in-house systems. Does having any software patent at all entitle me to look at all the code in the world to make sure it isn't violating my patent? That seems far fetched, but only a bit more so than granting this patent in the first place.

If I recall correctly...

This is actually called a "cusp date". I know for a fact that Excel uses it, and has used it since at least 1995 (I did some really trivial y2k remediation stuff). DOS has been using this for ages as well (enter 1-1-00 as the date, it comes out 2000, most DOS file interrupts handles this the same way as well). As much as I hate to point to an MS product as prior art, well, it's the most readily available one in my brain right now. :)

This patent will fall hard. Don't worry.

Text of the patent

The patent is number 5,806,063

Here is the full text [164.195.100.11] from the USPTO server.

It really is as simple as it sounds. Quite unbelievable.

Err... it's not *quite* as stupid as you think,

but still stupid.

Here's the patent in question:

http://www.patents.ibm.com/details?&pn10=US05668 989

What does this mean? It means that you can represent years from 1900-2059 using a hexidecimal number, where the first digit is a decade indicator (10 years) and the second digit is an offset in the decade.

Okay, it's definately original, but I haven't seen anyone use this method yet. You may as well just represent your two-digit date as a byte, and use "100" as the value for 2000. This is good all the way up to 2155 too! If anyone has actually seen these dates anywhere, I'd like to know. Not a clean solution in any case...

Welcome to the year 19a0 everyone! ;)

Patent number and link to patent

Since submitting the article, I've found the patent in question. Here is a link [uspto.gov] to the abstract. The patent number is 5,806,063, and application was filed on 10/3/96. There's gotta be prior art.

Oh, and by way of correction. McDonnell Douglas assigned the patent to the inventor, Bruce Dickens. Mr. Dicken's (and his attorneys) are the ones running around threatening everyone.



--GnrcMan--

Nope, the orignal comment had it right

The patent you are referring to was not assigned to Bruce Dickens by McDonnell Douglas. The correct patent is 5,806,063 [uspto.gov]

--GnrcMan--

Prior art example - possibly

I am not absolutely certain if this example pre-dates the patent date, but the Oracle database engine has a special date format, where you put in 'RR' instead of 'YY' when you format dates. It then windows the date around 1950/2049 (I think).

I remember using this on a project a number of years ago - I'm pretty sure it was before 10/1996. Even if it wasn't, it was close to then, and the people at Oracle must have been planning it for a while before release. If that was even the first oracle db release to use it.

bakes
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Fixing patent situation

Here is summary [worldforge.org] of "Basic Patent Law for Programmers" [slashdot.org] -discussion. We should analyse possible solutions [worldforge.org] that were presented and see what of those should be employed.

I patented the idea of patenting the obvious!

Even though people are already doing it, and it is obvious to any parasite with a lawyer, I've patented the technique of applying for a patent for a direction that everybody in the industry is taking, even though such a patents such never be granted (isn't there a requirement for innovation?). Then saying nothing while everyone starts using "my idea", and hitting them for $$$ a few years later.
All these guys like McDonnell-Douglas are gonna get a huge bill from my lawyers pretty soon. They should have checked the patent archives before embarking on such a scam^H^H^H legal course of action, but now it is going to cost them!

This could be interesting

This might actually be a good thing for patent reform. Think about it:

It's barely two months before "Y2K" and it's certain that thousands of consultants are scrambling around computer systems all over this country trying to fix "Y2K bugs." Some of those consultants are working for the Federal Government. Some of those consultants working for the Gov't are using this "Windowing" technique to fix the bugs. McDonnel-Douglass is going to want to sue these consultants and/or the federal government for violating their patent, causing those consultants to have to re-do all their work with some other method...

...less than two months before "Y2K".

Can you say "National Security"? Can you see the federal government using its pull to invalidate this patent pretty f-ing quickly so it doesn't have to scrap everything they've been working on for the last couple of years?

This really could be a good thing. Of course, what will likely happen is that only this one patent will get overturned and the rest of the patent system will continue to be screwed up and useless just like it has been.

I'm kind of surprised that nobody has taken the tack that, as stated in the Contitution, the whole concept of "patents" and the "patent office" comes from the phrase, "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;" and that it seems pretty obvious that the patent system, as exists, no longer promotes Progress of Science and useful Arts.

Someone brave should just sue the patent office as it exists as being unconstitutional and use as evidence the huge number of patent lawsuits and the ways these massive technology corporations now keep "patent portfolios" not to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" but to use as essentially blackmail to keep other companies from suing them, or as in this case with McDonnel-Douglass, to threaten every computer-reliant corporation in the country with lawsuits for doing what's essentially government mandated work to update their computer systems. It might work.

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