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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: New XML tool for improving data-processing performance
 Shigeru, Shigeru Yoshida wrote: [snip] >Since I have not known prior art for this kinds of CSV compation, the pior >art is just what I want to know. > > Well, of course you would. To me, this particular patent underscores some of the numerous faults in the US patent system, particularly with regards to software patents. For one thing, I hope you realize the absurdity of your position - that of getting a patent, and then asking the question in a public forum, as to whether anyone knows of prior art. Now the public bears the burden of refuting your patent, rather than you bearing the burden of proving your patent. For one thing, the fact that you are only asking _now_ in a public forum as to whether this is new, rather than before the patent was granted, suggests that you didn't perform enough "due diligence" to find prior art, as you left out at least one apparently logical place to ask the relevant questions. As to another issue, according to the USPTO web site, they allow patenting of processes, yet you seem to have as part of your patent a claim to a file format, but patents ought not, or should not be for file formats in-and-of themselves. It seems to me that you could argue that your process of converting XML to CSV values, in that context, is not particularly innovative, as you clearly declare the use of XSLT. If someone were to have a patent on XSLT (which nobody has come forward to collect on - yet!), then I would guess that that such a patent would be rather broad in scope - something along the lines of a process wherein XML + scripted XML declarations yields a transform to an arbitrary text (and possibly binary) format. Your patent would clearly fall under the aegis of such a pre-existing patent. Thus any claims that you might have as to the actual process of transformation within your XSLT would be the only patentable part, but the original patent would likely have cast a wide enough net to "capture" such a use. Apparently, by current USPTO standards, you don't have to prove that your patent falls outside the scope of the intent of the authors of XSLT, merely that it is an innovative use of XSLT. Alas, since such a preexisting patent doesn't (seem to) exist, ironically, it is all that much harder to find prior art that someone has done exactly what you have done, and thus it would is patentable. In fact, I'm almost certain that you are not the first to use XSLT to convert XML to CSV, likely so that such data could be imported into spreadsheets, but many of those projects were likely one-off, in-house projects done by some junior engineer who never even thought to look at the USPTO web site, or would have laughed if someone suggested what they were doing was patentable. In a sense, you are "stealing" from the public domain, by taking a solution that would _not_ be patentable if a patent on XSLT existed, and patenting it merely because you can, because there are no _legal_ claims built into the XSLT specification about the possible scope of its application. In the concrete, physical world, should I come up with a new way to use a capacitor - for example, a variable speed windshield wiper, or a temporary power source for a hand-held computer when the battery is removed, the new uses are patentable, and possible well deserved. The analog in the computer world, however, wherein a process "X" takes input "A", and produces output "B" is much less clear-cut. If I merely change the input from "A" to "C", and get output "D", it may not be particularly obvious, but it certainly _isn't_ novel (and its utility remains to be determined), in that all you have done conceptually is rename your variables, which you were free to do at any time. Due to the flexibility of computers, it is also equally possible to hold the inputs constant, and change the process (think function pointers in C/C++, or a state machine design pattern), again coming up with something which may not be obvious, but again isn't novel. Unfortunately, since computers can freely alter the processes by which the same inputs are processed (as part of a larger process, I might add), the idea that you can patent new "processes" which take the same inputs, or vice versa is absurd - you are merely following the same design patterns that computer scientists (and peons like myself) have been using for decades. If you were to go the extra step, and change both the inputs and the processes at the same time, I might grant you a well deserved patent, however, it would only be deserved if you could show that the input, output, and process were in no way logically analogous to existing inputs or processes. Unfortunately the USPTO doesn't have my high standards. Should I work on things that are patentable for my company, under the current absurd system I think I have no choice but to recommend that the company patent the technology. But I don't agree with the system, and I think it fails the very premise it is meant to insure in the context of software development, that of promoting the progress of the sciences and arts, and instead stifles innovation, hinders creativity, and is an economic NOOP at best, and a drag on software companies at worst. Actually, I wonder whether anyone has research on how many "dot-bomb" companies had patents in their profiles, as part of their supposed "value" to their investors. I could go on, but this isn't the right forum. -Eric 
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