lpq's Journal: patent protection extended to data structures in programs

This does not bode well. With a patent grant to Microsoft, NZLawyer reports: Patent Protection allowed for underlying data structures.

Commenting on the Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand (IPONZ) decision IT specialist, Matt Adams, talks about IPONZ's flexibility in extending the 1950's definition of "invention" and the protection the 1953 Patent Act offers: "Extending that protection to cover the underlying database design will give software developers recognition for the creativity that goes into structuring their data."

Article is a few months old, but don't remember reading about it back then. Hopefully it won't spread... "Data Structures"? Does that mean I can patent a data structure holding an integer value?

int foo;

Or does it have to use a 'struct' type definition?

I wonder if software developers can be held liable for unknowing violations. Seems like this might be more easily used to block creating compatible programs to read or write "patented data structures" on disk...ug.