[Fwd: AW: More UB-Tree patent information]

On Wed, 2002-04-10 at 16:32, Justin Clift wrote:

Hi everyone,

This is Prof. Bayer's response to the question "is it alright to use
UB-Tree's in Open Source projects?".

Have you found out _what_ exaclty is patented ?

Is it just his concrete implementation of "UB-Tree" or something
broader, like using one multi-dimensional index instead of multiple
one-dimensional ones ?

---------------------
Hannu

Hannu Krosing wrote:

On Wed, 2002-04-10 at 16:32, Justin Clift wrote:

Hi everyone,

This is Prof. Bayer's response to the question "is it alright to use
UB-Tree's in Open Source projects?".

Have you found out _what_ exaclty is patented ?

Is it just his concrete implementation of "UB-Tree" or something
broader, like using one multi-dimensional index instead of multiple
one-dimensional ones ?

Is there any way of finding out instead of asking him directly? Maybe
the patent places have online info?

Professor Bayer isn't being overly informative.

Anyone know?

:-)

Regards and best wishes,

Justin Clift

---------------------
Hannu

--
"My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those
who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the
first group; there was less competition there."
- Indira Gandhi

Patents are as much designed to confuse and dissuade someone from using
something as they are to patent something. Reading a patent is often
harder than killing the nearest chicken, strewing it's entrails allover
the yard, and then trying to make some sense of it.

Justin Clift wrote:

Hannu Krosing wrote:

Have you found out _what_ exaclty is patented ?

Is it just his concrete implementation of "UB-Tree" or something
broader, like using one multi-dimensional index instead of multiple
one-dimensional ones ?

(I know it is OT, please reply in private, I can summarize any reactions
to the list ...)

Patents are supposed to be only applicable to an industrial application
(with external side-effects). So ideas in themselves are not patentable.

Anyway, this is once more a good example of the danger of software patents
- you know what to reply when people say "software patents promote
innovation"

IANAL, just my 0,02 Euro.

see also : http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/savingeurope.html (also
interesting for non-europeans, of course !)

--
Tycho Fruru tycho.fruru@conostix.com
"Prediction is extremely difficult. Especially about the future."
- Niels Bohr

On Wed, 2002-04-10 at 21:55, Justin Clift wrote:

Hannu Krosing wrote:

On Wed, 2002-04-10 at 16:32, Justin Clift wrote:

Hi everyone,

This is Prof. Bayer's response to the question "is it alright to use
UB-Tree's in Open Source projects?".

Have you found out _what_ exaclty is patented ?

Is it just his concrete implementation of "UB-Tree" or something
broader, like using one multi-dimensional index instead of multiple
one-dimensional ones ?

Is there any way of finding out instead of asking him directly? Maybe
the patent places have online info?

I did a quick search at USPTO at
http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/search-bool.html
on "UB and Tree and index and database" and found among other things a
US patent no. 5,826,253 on mechanism very similar to LISTEN/NOTIFY,
afforded to Borland on October 20, 1998 based on application from April
19, 1996.
We should be safe as already Postgres95 had them ;)

when I searched for "UB and Tree and index and database and Bayer"
0 results came back.

when I omitted UB and searched for "Tree and index and database and
Bayer" I got 27 results, first of them on "Method and composition for
improving sexual fitness" ;)

the one possibly related related to our Bayer was nr 6,219,662 on
"Supporting database indexes based on a generalized B-tree index"
which had reference to :

Rudolf Bayer, "The Universal B-Tree for Multidimensional Indexing:
General Concepts", Worldwide Computing and Its Applications,
International Conference, WWCA '97, Tsukuba, Japan, (Mar. 1997), pp.
198-209.

and German patent 0 650 131 A1 which may be also relevant

----------------------
Hannu

Hannu Krosing wrote:

Have you found out _what_ exaclty is patented ?

Is it just his concrete implementation of "UB-Tree" or something
broader, like using one multi-dimensional index instead of multiple
one-dimensional ones ?

(I know it is OT, please reply in private, I can summarize any reactions
to the list ...)

Patents are supposed to be only applicable to an industrial application
(with external side-effects). So ideas in themselves are not patentable.

Anyway, this is once more a good example of the danger of software patents
- you know what to reply when people say "software patents promote
innovation"

IANAL, just my 0,02 Euro.

see also : http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/savingeurope.html (also
interesting for non-europeans, of course !)

--
Tycho Fruru tycho.fruru@conostix.com
"Prediction is extremely difficult. Especially about the future."
- Niels Bohr

I while ago I used xbase2pg and pg2xbase.
You should be able to find it on the net.

postgresql@fruru.com wrote:

Sorry all.
I replied to the wrong message.

Jean-Luc Lachance wrote:

On Wed, 10 Apr 2002 postgresql@fruru.com wrote:

Anyway, this is once more a good example of the danger of software patents
- you know what to reply when people say "software patents promote
innovation"

We (AEL, an association promoting freedom in every sense) have just now
put on-line a page which contains known software patents and the behaviour
of their respective owners wrt Free Software. (We have several
patent-related queries outstanding right now)

http://www.ael.be/node.php?id=52

We hope that this becomes a valuable source of information on which
patent's implementations are available for Free Software work, and which
aren't. We also include some contact information to ease communication
with the patent holder.

Of course, we encourage people on the "incompatible with Free Software"
category to inform us of any licensing changes they implement which
facilitate Free Software implementations, so that we can promptly update
the page accordingly.

Best Regards,
Tycho

--
Tycho Fruru tycho.fruru@conostix.com
"Prediction is extremely difficult. Especially about the future."
- Niels Bohr