
Patent on displaying SQL data in HTML, granted to IBM in 1998 - peey
https://patents.google.com/patent/US5737592A/
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wisecoder
IBM pays their company employees to file patents. It is also one of the key
factor for promotions. That's why you can see lot's of stupid patents out
there in IBM name.

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rwmj
Every big software company does this. It's a ridiculous arms race, but you
have to play or risk getting sued to oblivion by a patent troll.

~~~
amelius
Why don't big companies lobby for better patent laws then?

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adventured
Sometimes they do, very successfully. Several prominent tech companies backed
efforts to neuter patent trolls in the prior decade, to positive effect.
Patent trolls are one instance where big tech's interests are largely aligned
with smaller tech companies, as both hate them.

In the recent case of TC Heartland vs Kraft Foods, some large companies
(Apple, eBay, IBM, Microsoft, Intel, Walmart) supported the effort to abolish
being able to file patent lawsuits in most any venue (a concept which helped
lead to East Texas becoming the capital of patent lawsuits in the US). Often
you'll have big companies fight eachother in situations like that, as big
pharma was on the other side of that, arguing in favor of being able to sue in
any venue.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TC_Heartland_LLC_v._Kraft_Food...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TC_Heartland_LLC_v._Kraft_Foods_Group_Brands_LLC)

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peey
This is comical. It patents the entire system from HTML forms to get the input
to prepare the SQL query, to server sending data as formatted HTML back to
client.

This has been the bread and butter of PHP for two decades. I'm glad no one
tried to enforce this to take away like 99% of the internet.

~~~
norswap
I wouldn't hold up in any serious suit, but it could be a good patent trolling
weapon. Let's hope that when IBM inevitably goes the way of the cuckoo, this
does not fall in the wrong hand and/or patent reform has happened by them (fat
chance imho).

~~~
auxym
If that patent was filed in 98, it expired in 2018.

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mrfusion
I wonder if lots of bad parents have expired or are expiring soon? I remember
reading the most dumb patents on slashdot in the early 2000s so maybe.

~~~
vikramkr
Software patents have gotten a lot harder to get with a lot more stringent a
set of requirements than at the start of the dot com boom, at least as of the
Alice ruling in 2014. It could always be reversed, but for now, most of these
really bad patents are going to die out/be invalidated and hopefully reduce
the power of patent trolls

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wolco
Does anyone have a good software patent story? Where a small company was able
to use for good or to fight off a bigger player.

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brlewis
Does a crime become good if the victim is big and the perpetrator is small?

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ineedasername
It's roughly the military equivalent of the enemy having their artillery
emplacements overrun and then turned against their own troops. Size of the
respective fighting forces is irrelevant, it's simply a useful tactic. Of
course if the overrun emplacements _were_ part of a large, belligerent force
agitating a smaller force without cause, there may seem to be a certain
justice in using their weapons against them. It doesn't make the subsequent
killing "good", but it may help discourage further aggression against
strategically disadvantaged but tactically superior forces.

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aidos
I never understand where patents start and end with the bit they claim to be
new. Where is that in the patent document? In this case they’re talking about
executing sql and rendering as html. Ok. Fine. Phpmyadmin was already doing
that in 1998. But they also talk about these macro files that you’re executing
by substituting variables into them. As that the new thing? Are these just
stored procedures? I feel like we were already doing that in 1998 too.

~~~
JackC
This wikipedia section is a good place to start seeing how it works:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_claim#Basic_types_and_c...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_claim#Basic_types_and_categories)

What I remember from law school is: let's say you're drafting a patent, and
you want it to cover as much as possible without getting invalidated by prior
art. So you're going to write some claims, and each claim can stand or fall on
its own (each claim could be rejected by the patent office, or invalidated
later because of prior art, without invalidating the more specific claims). So
first you'll write a series of independent claims, and those will each be as
broad as you hope you can get away with ("it's HTML on a computer!"). Having
the broad independent claims stand is your best case scenario, because that
makes it hard for competitors to work around your patent. But then for each
independent claim you'll add dependent claims, which narrow down what you're
claiming ("OK, it's HTML on a computer with foo," "OK, it's HTML on a computer
with foo and bar"). That's your fallback scenario: maybe "HTML on a computer"
gets rejected, and "HTML on a computer with foo" gets rejected, but "HTML on a
computer with foo and bar" is original enough to make it through, so you still
end up owning something of value. But maybe now that your broad claims are
gone, your competitors can avoid your patent by doing "HTML with foo and baz"
to accomplish the same thing.

So that's how the game theory works: you're basically leaving money on the
table if you don't include some super broad claims at the top. Doesn't cost
you anything if those ones don't stick. So we can't just read a patent and
assume it actually protects every single broad claim -- but we can't assume it
doesn't, either. We won't find out for sure which (if any) claims are actually
valid unless there's a lawsuit and a judge or jury has to pick through the
prior art and decide whether there are claims in there that are narrow enough
to be original.

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dathinab
> "HTML on a computer with foo and bar"

But here it's where the patent system is broken. Doing conceptually trivial
combinations of on itself non patentable thinks should _never_ be patentable,
at lest for software but probably for anything. Sure patenting a specific
complex mechanism for combining two thinks might be patentable but in case of
software this is hardly ever the case, most times its more or less trivial
glue code.

So e.g. Face recognition + smartphone + unlock screen might all be patentable
by itself. Especially a faceregocnition algorithm which works especially good
for smartphone usecase might be patentable. Bu using existing face recognition
on a smartphone to unlock the screen shouldn't be patentable. They are all
existing components and combining them is conceptually trivial. In the end
patents where meant to protect research investments, not random ideas.

~~~
adrianN
Every invention is just a combination of existing things with _maybe_ a new
twist somewhere. James Watt wasn't the first person to build a steam engine,
he just introduced a separate condenser to an existing design.

It's really hard to find a good line of what should constitute a patentable
invention. Personally I think that no software should be patentable,
ultimately because I don't think that Mathematics should belong to anybody.
But I understand that other people see this differently.

~~~
bdowling
> existing things with _maybe_ a new twist somewhere.

To be valid, a claim must be novel (new) and non-obvious over the prior art.
So there _absolutely must_ be a new twist somewhere.

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adrianN
I can still build a machine entirely from off-the shelf parts, connecting them
exactly in the ways they're built to connect to each other, and claim to have
invented it.

~~~
bdowling
If the resulting combination is a machine that is useful, new, and non-
obvious, then I'd call that an invention.

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mv4
"Since 1920, IBM has received more than 140,000 U.S. patents".

Let that sink in.

Source:
[https://www.research.ibm.com/patents/#:~:text=Since%201920%2...](https://www.research.ibm.com/patents/#:~:text=Since%201920%2C%20IBM%20has%20received,the%20patents%20awarded%20to%20IBM).

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praveenweb
How does one developing a product find out if they are infringing a patent?
Apart from the Apple/Samsung patent battle few years ago and to an extent
Google/Oracle battle, I don’t remember anything in the tech space leveraging
this.

Is there a list of companies that got screwed by giant companies because they
unknowingly infringed a patent?

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dathinab
Due to the US patent amt granting all kind of patents which should never have
been granted (due to e.g. priority art or triviality of the patent) it's
basically impossible today to do anything in tech without braking patents.

For example one person patented the wheel and got the patent granted, or
recently I found that some company on zooming in and out on a graph or
automatically shutting down computers when they are not used.

Normally large tech companies don't use any of this patents, it's not in their
interest to make it obvious how broken the patent system is. But the problem
starts once a company starts to fall and now tries to make money no matter
what. Or this patents are bought up by patent trolls.

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todd8
One of IBM’s most important patents was filed around 1987–I don’t remember the
date exactly-it covered the cookie.

Even back then IBM was subject to patent trolls patenting things like using
the ctrl key, etc. and then going after IBM. They liked having a huge
collection of patents and even disclosed inventions that were not patented but
instead published in a publication (I think it was called something like _The
IBM Invention Disclosure Bulletin_ ) that was available in only a handful of
public libraries, like the New York public library. That way if they wanted to
use a technique that they had already disclosed they could use these
publications of proof of prior art. I filed a few ideas that they said they
weren’t interested in that didn’t even qualify for this level of disclosure.

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FpUser
I think that the patents in it's current state (in the US at least and in the
software area in particular) are outlived their usefulness. It was an
artificial construct to begin with with the goal that small people can invent
things and rip some benefits. Now it is a large scale tactical and strategic
weapon amassed by large corporations. If followed to the letter small
person/company can not do f..k all without breaking some obscure patent's
clause. If enforced to the letter the players that are not big enough would
not be able to create any meaningful software. And the cost of filing a patent
has risen to the point that small person can not really get meaningful patent
(speaking from personal experience of trying to get not software related
patent in the US).

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pnw_hazor
Welcome to the big leagues. Patents are big part of every mature industry.
Software isn't special.

You should see how fierce the patent wars are in the automobile industry,
medical devices, electronics, materials science, adhesives, brake pads,
throttle cables, fasteners, tooling, construction/building materials, to name
a few.

~~~
type0
> Software isn't special.

The difference is that software is special compared to electronics, chemistry
etc etc You can't be vague in those fields but in software implementations you
can as much as you want. Maybe we should start issuing patents in hairdressing
as well.

~~~
pnw_hazor
You need enough definiteness in a disclosure to enable someone of ordinary
skill in the art make the invention.

The specific data structures, programming languages, program/application
architecture, are generally unimportant (unless they are the invention).

Gadget patents are the same way. They don't have to claim particular
fasteners, coatings, materials, dimensions, or the like, unless they are
necessary for the invention.

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jwildeboer
_expired_ patent.

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punnerud
Is patents also a way to get around tax?

Have a company pay “fee” to the same company registered in another country.
You have to defend your patents if not you can get the state against you. The
patents is then not guard against competition.

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adwww
It quite litteraly is a way around tax in the UK at least. Corporate tax on
profits earnt through patents is less (10%) than ordinary corporation tax
(19%).

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kerng
Seems like IBM (patent owned by CISCO now) is officially responsible for
inventing SQL injection!

There is not mitigation to SQL Injection attack in the patent - didn't read it
all word by wors but skimmed it through.

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pcurve
It may look silly now but the patent was first filed only a few months after
first Netscape browser was released. Back in 1995. I remember the web in 1994
and 1995. I don’t blame for filing it.

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cowmix
Nope, stupid patent. People were rendering SQL results in HTML for at least
two years when that patent was filed.

When I say people, I mean me. On publicly available websites. :)

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pnw_hazor
Were you using a specialized macro language sitting in between the form fields
and the SQL?

In the claims this is the element:

"(c) substituting the data entered by the user into the HTML input form into a
dynamic SQL query using a common name space, wherein the common name space
comprises variables found in both the dynamic SQL query and the HTML input
form;"

This expired patent is much narrower than just rendering SQL results in HTML.
It claims a particular way of mapping form field inputs to SQL using an
intermediate macro language and a macro file that is employed per request/post
that defines the mapping rules for the request.

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rafaelturk
As IBM core revenue continues to decline there is a serious risk that they
will become a patent troll.

~~~
pnw_hazor
IBM has been aggressive with patents for decades.

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gran_colombia
Ever wonder why the US dominates in the number of patents? This is why.

