35
This isn't exactly about a doubly-linked list, but rather about an object that contains two “next” pointers that let it be included in two unrelated linked lists. While a doubly-linked list is a special case of that, you'd need to argue that the generalization is obvious (and I don't think it is) or find prior art for it anyway. So let's look for prior art ...
answered Oct 17 '12 at 14:56
Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
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17
Knuth, "The Art of Computer Programming", vol. 1 "Fundamental Algorithms", first edition, ca. 1970, shows a diagram of a sparse matrix implementation that uses precisely this technique. Each cell contains two links, one to the next nonzero element in the row, one to the next nonzero element in the column.
That would seem to constitute Prior Art, seeing as ...
15
The claim is as follows:
A computer-readable medium comprising computer-readable instructions for providing search engine optimization analysis, wherein execution of said computer-readable instructions by one or more processors causes said one or more processors to carry out steps comprising: obtaining a starting uniform resource locator identifying a ...
12
The VMS operating system - first released in 1977 - tagged each file with a version number.
Here is a script written in 1992 called COPY_IF_NEWER which does what the patent claims, using the creation date of the file as the "version tag".
The COPY command of VMS did this automatically and by default.
9
This seems to be roughly equivalent to what the rsync protocol does (as noted by Alex Chamberlain). From the rsync technical report (1998):
The rsync algorithm consists of the following steps:
ᵦ splits the file B into a series of non-overlapping fixed-sized blocks of size S bytes1. The last block may be shorter than S bytes.
For each of these ...
8
These claims read like the feature list of the Enterprise Objects Framework introduced by Next in 1994, as part of their software development platform written in Objective-C. It was also part of their WebObjects web development platform, introduced in 1996. In 1999 they released a Java version of WebObjects, including EOF translated to Java. Here is an EOF ...
8
The essential element of this patent seems to be computing a hash based on other hashes. Here are some examples:
Compute a hash for each file on a disk. Then compute a hash for each directory based on the hashes of the files it contains. Use those directory hashes to determine whether two directories have identical contents.
Compute a hash for each frame ...
7
Philip Erdelsky's public domain "Linked-List Memory Sort" http://www.efgh.com/software/llmsort.htm, dated July 31, 1998, gives an example of a single data structure linked into two separate lists. Each element contains two "next" pointers. One chain of next pointers orders the elements alphabetically, the other numerically:
struct element
{
struct element ...
6
This also sounds similar to skip lists. In that case, though, you can have many pointers for a single object, not just two.
6
Let's look at a typical case, in plain English.
(A) for a first data item comprising a first plurality of parts,
Consider a file or message A composed of several blocks A1,…,An, where each block is a sequence of bits: A = A1 || … || An where || denotes concatenation.
(a1) applying a first function to each part of said first plurality of parts to ...
answered Oct 4 '12 at 22:39
Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
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6
AltaVista released "AltaVista Discovery" in 1998. This was an application that ran on your local PC, and maintained a locally-stored index of your documents and emails.
It also provided a browser toolbar via which you could launch a search, specifying whether you wanted to search your local files or the web. Regardless of whether you performed a web search ...
6
Depending on how it is claimed, probably yes. I realize it's a non-definite semi-answer, but the topic, as with all things patent-law, is complex and involves legal theories like "printed matter doctrine".
Very interesting discussion in this article (which also has a few examples):
Andrew Joseph Hollander, "Patenting Computer Data Structures: The Ghost, ...
6
The (then) Borland (today: Embarcadero) Delphi programming language & RAD development environment has been accessing databases with objects since at least 1995.
Delphi is both the name of an the "Object Pascal" programming language and a RAD Object Oriented Integrated Development Environment, which since it's first version provided objects for ...
5
If you look in http://portal.uspto.gov/external/portal/pair (enter the number without the "US" and "B1") as "Patented case" and the next fee payment window closes on 11/27/2013. The patent is valid. You will also be able to see that it had quite a stormy path to its acceptance which resulted in a certificate of correction.
If the maintenance fee is paid, ...
4
Sun Microsystems:
Provisional U.S. Patent Application No. 60/068,415, entitled “System and Method for Mapping Between Objects and Databases,” filed on Dec. 22, 1997
https://www.google.com/patents/US6360223
EDIT: Too late. US5937402A filed Jun 19, 1997. This is not prior art.
4
Microsoft Word for example, will notice that you have loaded a document using and old data format and will update that to a newer data format for you. That data format is presumably described by a format template.
The following description from the patent just isn't a true description of what numerous other applications do:
However, these applications ...
4
From a link from a previous HN discussion:
http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1bbb3/congratulations_mingjen_wang_on_patenting_the/c1bc13
Unfortunately, some of the links in that comment itself are broken.
Note that while the claims only include a second "auxiliary pointer," it can be interpreted to include third, fourth or more auxiliary ...
4
Data structures have been upheld as patentable when they have structural and functional relationships that provide a useful result. Data structures are not generally patentable if they are descriptive or recite a list. The manipulation of ideas is not patentable.
The claims do matter. Compare In re Lowry, 32 F.3d 1579 (Fed Cir 1994) (memory having a ...
4
In many Window management systems I've seen, a Window object has a point to a number of other related Window objects such as 'Next Sibling', 'Previous Sibling', Parent, 'First Child', Owned windows. This is a clear example of an object being on a list (every Window has a Parent) and also have an auxiliary pointer to some other object possibly on the same ...
4
The question here skips over a big point. The patent document referred to (US20100325182) is a related to a pending patent application that has was rejected by the PTO and has now been abandoned by the patent applicant. So, there is no need to worry about this one.
Generally, about 1/3 or more of patent applications filed are never issued as patents. If ...
3
Palm OS had a system-wide search that would call each program's main function with an argument to do a search (typed in a text field in a search dialog). The call to main was on the stack of the search system without even fully launching each application. Each program could display the results that it chose based on its own search.
(Mykland, Robert. Palm OS ...
3
I just remembered - I have used a software that was almost exactly the same. This had to be 10 or so years back, from what I recall it was marketed as a "link checker". The name - from the fog of memory, was something like "Web Analyzer" or "WebAna". I probably still have the package in storage, I will update this when I find out for sure.
In "WebAna" - one ...
3
Another potential example of prior art is given in Wirth's classic textbook "Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs" (1976). In section 4.4.3 a data structure for topological sorting is described, wherein a list of nodes is maintained using next pointers, and an additional ("secondary") link provides the ability to traverse the nodes according to a partial ...
2
Informatica has used objects to store its mappings and sessions in DB since late 1990's. I joined it in 1999 and it was a well-established company by then (went public in April 1999). I believe I've heard of a patent being awarded to Informatica for that very thing: storing objects in RDBMS.
2
When did ADA and smalltalk get the ability to access databases? Both languages predate the patent by more than a decade, and I'm sure accessed databases before then.
Embedded SQL for Ada 95
ODBC bindings for ADA 95 - Low-cost Development Systems
2
The foremost example would be Toplink for Smalltalk and Java, now owned by Oracle.
See:
http://books.google.com/books?id=ko5KTfIHjasC&lpg=PA6&ots=nya4WfXH0A&dq=smalltalk%20orm&pg=PA6#v=onepage&q=smalltalk%20orm&f=false
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/history-of-toplink-101111.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TopLink
2
Windows NT since at least Windows 2000 has had search system built in that includes a plugin system so new types of documents can be indexed.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee805985(v=vs.85).aspx
It was not on by default and has an interface the looked like a web search results but it worked.
2
Would running linux executing the find command to search for a song across multiple data-sources (local disks, virtual file-systems, and a remote mounted NFS partition) count?
a user-input device (physical keyboard) providing an inputted information descriptor (null-terminated byte stream, aka a string representing the filename arg of the find command)
said ...
2
I believe the concept of two-pointers in a list goes back to the works of Newell and Simon at Carnegie Institute of Technology or Rand Corp. in 1957. This is probably the first time the term "lists" as a data-structure description is used. This is a bit before LISP was invented.
Newell, Allen; Simon, H.A., The logic theory machine -- A complex information ...
2
A method of digital data gathering for providing a direct answer to a natural language question, comprising:
a) accepting input of a natural language question;
b) identifying the relevant concepts of the natural language question;
c) assembling the relevant concepts of the natural language question into a query
d) identifying, via a ...
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