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.
Someone patented linked lists
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Re: Someone patented linked lists
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#95Earlier 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…
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.