As IBM core revenue continues to decline there is a serious risk that they will become a patent troll.
Patent on displaying SQL data in HTML, granted to IBM in 1998
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Re: Patent on displaying SQL data in HTML, granted to IBM in 1998
#42Is 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.
Re: Patent on displaying SQL data in HTML, granted to IBM in 1998
#43Re: Patent on displaying SQL data in HTML, granted to IBM in 1998
#44Is 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.
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%).
Re: Patent on displaying SQL data in HTML, granted to IBM in 1998
#45This 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.
This has been the bread and butter of PHP for two decades
And many other things too, but someone had to be first. I doubt it was IBM but there would have been some elapsed time between TBL inventing HTML and the first time someone dynamically generated it from an RDBMS. That’s the person who could claim prior art.
Re: Patent on displaying SQL data in HTML, granted to IBM in 1998
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
This wikipedia section is a good place to start seeing how it works: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_claim#Basic_types_and_c... 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 of…
> "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…
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.
Re: Patent on displaying SQL data in HTML, granted to IBM in 1998
#47"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....
Re: Patent on displaying SQL data in HTML, granted to IBM in 1998
#48IBM 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.
Every big corp pays employees to file patents. I don't know that it's a factor for promotions at my employer; certainly not up to Eng 3 or 4, and no manager has told me that I would be promoted if I filed patents.
Re: Patent on displaying SQL data in HTML, granted to IBM in 1998
#49Does anyone have a good software patent story? Where a small company was able to use for good or to fight off a bigger player.
You may be interested in reading the license page for the royalty-free Opus audio codec: https://opus-codec.org/license/ Full disclosure, I am a member of the Xiph.Org Foundation.
Importantly, Xiph.org is a 501(c)(3).
Re: Patent on displaying SQL data in HTML, granted to IBM in 1998
#50Does anyone have a good software patent story? Where a small company was able to use for good or to fight off a bigger player.
I know a few, at least one asserted one of their few patents against IBM to force a licensing deal -- reversing the direction of the money to the startup instead of them paying IBM.
If a startup has some decent patents, they get to have a conversation with companies like IBM that come calling. Otherwise, they have to roll over.
Basically, when the IBMs of the world come around demanding a license, you show IBM they are infringing on your patent.
In general patents are business assets or business tools. They are important for valuation, among other things.