Live data from Hacker News

Someone patented linked lists

google.com

91–95 of 95 posts

Re: Someone patented linked lists

#91
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't a doubly-linked list be covered by this patent? If I understand the claims correctly, the backwards traversal would fall under claim 1.[1] It definitely provides a second sequence to traverse said list, even if it's stretching 'following' a little bit. [1] The relevant part of claim 1 is: said auxiliary pointer being adapted to direct said computer program to a second following i…

Sure. That alone probably wouldn't invalidate the patent, though. The claim is for a more generic capability. Of course the patent is obvious and there's (almost certainly) prior art for the multiply-linked list anyway.

[deleted]

Re: Someone patented linked lists

#93
Sounds like Ming-Jen Wang patented Ted Nelson's ZigZag structure (http://xanadu.com/zigzag/) which is prior art (fully described at least by 1999-see http://himalia.it.jyu.fi/ffdoc/fenfire/history/Milestones.ge...) and quite possibly patented by Ted Nelson as well (http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/233#comment-1715). And I'm only familiar with ZigZag because of my interest in Ted Nelson's work, otherwise, it doesn't seem to have gone anywhere.

Re: Someone patented linked lists

#94
This is really strange. At the career fair at my school, the USPTO was there recruiting engineers and CS students. Assuming one single person with even a modicum of programming knowledge looked at this application, I can't see any way that this was issued, let alone after 4 years of sitting in purgatory(?). If this was sold to Lodsys could they sue any company that used a doubly linked list without licensing it? How would they even find out about what data structures you used in your code?

Re: Someone patented linked lists

#95
post #86
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree there is a risk of misinterpretation as in "all kind all linked lists have been patented, here is the patent" and for this reason, it maybe would have been better to get an even more precise title. By i'm technically still fine with the current one. The claims (both in the application and in the granted patent) barely talk about traversing the "primary" or the "auxiliary" list which provide another sequence (…

Someone else explained my problem with the title better than I managed. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2875082 Imagine the headline read, "Gas up to $8.23 a gallon" and only upon reading the article did you discover that the "gas" they're talking about is 110 octane race gas. Yes, race gas is a type of gas(oline), but the headline is still quite misleading, as the common definition, without qualifiers, is the pu…

I argue that it's claiming the traversal of linked lists, provided you have a choice between at least two linked lists containing the same set of elements. I argue that this restriction is meaningless, because it has no technical impact in this patent. Even when the patent seems to try to be a little more broad, by trying to describe the data structure itself, this description also depends on traversal and nothing else: "[claim 1 ...] said primary function pointer functioning as a primary linked list to direct a computer program to a first sequence to _traverse_ said computerized list [...]" (x2 because the same thing is written for the "auxiliary" list, then x3 in claim 2 for the "tertiary" one).

There is never any interaction described between one list and the other -- so from the point of view of patenting I don't see anything difference between this patent and a mere description of basic single linked lists, description centered on its traversal (the various enumerations are to be considered as irrelevant in themselves, and are not supplemented by anything else).

That reason alone would be one of the major angle of attack of the patent, would it not be already even more basically invalid because of triviality and prior art. The only challenge would be to present those formal concepts using casual language clearly enough so that nobody would mistake this description as the description of a new structure (even in the hypothetical alternate universe where nobody ever previously used two lists at a times for ordering the same sets of elements)

There is no meat.

Post reply on HN