[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] An other /%?/&*" patent - help requested from the community.
Hi, This morning I received a proud announcement of a company advertising their new patent pending on guess what? Dynamic aggregation. Due to the well known zeal the US patent bureau to do a good to check any prior work :-)), I am afraid that this company will get the patent approved by the bureau, even if the technique is well known, published in several articles (including mine) and used by XML practitioners in their day to day tasks. Here is the extract I received: Information Architects (NASDAQ: IARC) today announced it has a patent pending for dynamic syndication business method and underlying SmartCode® dynamic syndication technology. Dynamic syndication is widely seen as the emerging business model for Internet business applications from interactive television to trading hubs and exchanges.... This patent pending process enables our customers to access multiple content sources simultaneously and syndicate their presentation in very customized formats. Not only will its flexibility create stronger synergies with our partners, such as Interwoven (NASDAQ: IWOV) and Art Technologies Group (NASDAQ: ATG), but it will lead the e-marketplace into the future," said Gruder... Off course this company is convinced or try to convince the world that they invented the cookie cutter. to prevent that one member of our community (the XML developers community) get sued because this member used any dynamic aggregation with XSLT (using the document function) or used the xinclude construct to do so, I request the help of this community to: - provide a pointer on where we can find the text describing this patent pending stuff (for a complete exam) - If somebody knows any previous work or any published material (articles, specs, emails, etc...) mentioning the technique to dynamically aggregate content using markup technologies. Please let us know. The goal is to "aggregate" this info, send it to the patent bureau (but I have no great hopes that they will be more zealous than before after having received the document :-). But mostly, the goal is to keep the document posted and accessible to this community so that any member of the XML dev community (in fact anyone) can refer to it, in case this company would use their right to sue such XML developer who did used dynamic aggregation or used the technique in any product. The document would help any member of this community to be Well armed against a patent system that unfortunately is out of order. Cheers and many thanks for you help. Didier PH Martin ---------------------------------------------- Email: martind@n... Conferences: xml devconf 2000 (http://www.xmldevconf2000.com) Book: XML Professional (http://www.wrox.com) column: Style Matters (http://www.xml.com) Products: http://www.netfolder.com
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