

Time-Series Database patented by GE - rodionos
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=9087098.PN.&OS=PN/9087098&RS=PN/9087098

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easytiger
I remember trolling the linked list patent people 10+ years ago. I sent them
an email saying my software made extensive uses of linked lists and it had
come to my attention that they had patented them. They sent me to their legal
department to arrange an agreement.

Insane.

I wonder how influxdb et al will receive this news.

Here is the list of people who should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves:

Lin; Jerry (Latham, NY), Aggour; Kareem Sherif (Niskayuna, NY), Courtney;
Brian Scott (Naperville, IL), Interrante; John Alan (Scotia, NY), LaComb;
Christina Ann (Schenectady, NY), Mathur; Sunil (East Walpole, MA), McConnell;
Christopher Thomas (Latham, NY), Snell; Quinn (Salem, UT)

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dozzie
Pretty much in no way whatsoever. RRDtool as a prior art example.

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moron4hire
Unfortunately, USPTO only considers other patents or academic papers as prior
art.

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davelnewton
Are you sure? I've been involved in several instances where demonstrable
systems were enough.

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moron4hire
Sorry, that was just what two different patent officers told me. If they were
wrong, I wouldn't be surprised.

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jandrewrogers
As someone who has designed a few large-scale time-series databases, I read
the entire patent. It was filed in December 2012, long after I last did a
clean room design, so pretty much everything I've done could be viewed as
prior art. I would have to imagine Splunk has something to say about this too.

The primary claim of novelty in this patent is storing index block metadata on
a separate server than the storage blocks. To the extent that pretty much
every distributed time-series platform ever designed separates index block
metadata from storage blocks, it does not reflect positively on the competency
of the software team at GE that they think this is novel. (I realize that this
may not have been the choice of the software team.)

Furthermore, in properly designed systems, these functions are separated at
the granularity of a process rather than a server because it is more flexible
and efficient. They _can_ be implemented on separate servers, and usually are,
but it is not a requirement because requiring it would be stupid. But if GE
did not make this a requirement, I doubt it would have withstood even the
nominal prior art search; that limitation on scope was needed to get it
through.

Overall, the architecture of the time-series database implied in the patent is
consistent with someone that learned their poor distributed system habits from
the Hadoop ecosystem and decided to reinvent the time-series database without
knowing much about how those systems actually work. However, I am not
surprised this made it through the US patent system.

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hbs
Come on, stop your Hadoop hate speech, and simply bring SpaceCurve on the
bandwagon against this patent.

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domfletcher
It may be a bit of a liberal reading of it but doesn't the database that the
patent is stored in on that page violate the patent? It certainly has date
stamped data which is ingested and query-able...

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colinbartlett
Just wait for the next patent to be approved by USPTO: "Method of assigning
exclusive rights to an inventor."

~~~
xntrk
Who wants to file "Method of assigning exclusive rights to an inventor." with
me?

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DomreiRoam
Seems you can't sue the USPTO for issuing bad patents according to this[1].
But I think you should be compensated for the cost of a lawsuit based on bad
patents.

[1] [http://patentlyo.com/patent/2012/12/suing-the-uspto-for-
issu...](http://patentlyo.com/patent/2012/12/suing-the-uspto-for-issuing-bad-
patents.html)

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jarcane
You can be, if the judge in the eventual suit decides in your favor for legal
fees. But this can take years, and patent trolls big and small tend to
deliberately target only those who can't really afford to fight them.

~~~
DomreiRoam
You right on this. I meant that the USPTO seems to have no incentive to stop
bad patents. I don't think a small time inventor submitting an idea that seems
novel for him should be punished when he tries to enforce this in good faith.
USPTO should have the resources and the expertise to stop bad patent and when
they fail they should compensate for the mess they create. They are played by
NPE and big companies and don't defend the small inventor and the society in
general. They fail their public mission.

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fche
A very quick skimming of the patent suggests that they are talking more about
the online / distributed / dataflowish query evaluation engine than about a
simple timestamped data storage widget. (Not that this makes it much more
novel.)

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chaotic-good
We have used such systems in industrial control systems for decades. TSDB is
integral part of any modern SCADA system. This patent is a nonsense.

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bnastic
So, if I, like many here I presume, built one of these time series databases
long ago prior to this patent, and that "invention" is still active in real
production systems, can I claim prior art?

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halayli
In big corps, patent attorneys have quotas to fill. Usually they don't fully
understand the technology but try to patent it anyway.

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weddpros
then pattent attorneys should pay for their crimes, or should be sued by their
clients

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sedlich
Nearly all DBs have timestamps. This patent is nonsense. Patent attorneys
should also be payed for rejections.

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new1234567
WOW! You can store time series in a database! This is an amazing invention!!!

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patkai
I can imagine that GE has big plans for improving services like condition
monitoring for jet engines where they would sell monitoring data etc. If a
competing startup tries to compete they have ammunition.

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TD-Linux
To determine if you infringe this patent, you only need to look at the claims
- specifically, the independent claims (claim 1). If you do _anything_
differently, you don't infringe.

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derf_
Well, that is not quite true. You also need definitions for the words used in
the claims, which may require reading the description to understand properly.
But certainly the claims are where you start your analysis.

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elcct
Sounds a bit like InfluxDB...

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walkingolof
Well, this seems reasonable ......

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ricksplat
OLAP?

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ipsn
During my tenure at GE, quite a few years ago, there was an intense company-
wide drive to patent practically anything at all. We were given incentives to
do so, of course. We were told that GE only uses patents defensively, i.e. for
negotiations other companies. The incentives got many employees to patent
industry-wide practices, or trivially simple stuff, or really convoluted
methods that no one in their right minds will use anyway.

I haven't followed GE's track record closely after I got out, but I think they
still live by that guideline. In any case, GE is not a software company, and
it's unlikely they'd want to (or can) go after software companies on the basis
of patents such as this one.

The patent system is broken, and GE is just another company, in a long list,
that is abusing it for some reason. But so far, GE has given me little reason
to believe they'll come after me for infringing on these kinds of patents.

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rodionos
That's what I'm hoping for as well. It would have been a completely different
situation if this patent were granted to a non-practicing entity with a track
record of litigating in the Eastern District of Texas.

If you search for other patents/patent applications by the same inventors, you
get the picture, e.g.:[http://patents.justia.com/inventor/kareem-sherif-
aggour](http://patents.justia.com/inventor/kareem-sherif-aggour)

