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Oracle's CMS patent
Patent
6,745,238, assigned to Oracle, is entitled "self service system for web
site publishing." The abstract for this patent makes it clear that its
scope is broad:
The web site system permits a site administrator to construct the
overall structure, design and style of the web site. This allows
for a comprehensive design as well as a common look and feel for
the web site. The web site system permits content for the web site
to originate from multiple content contributors. The publication of
content is controlled by content owners. This permits assignment of
content control to those persons familiar with the content.
The patent application ws filed in March, 2000; it was granted on June 1 of this year. Offhand, it would appear that Oracle has patented the content management system. Such systems form the core of many thousands of web sites, so the potential impact of this patent is large. It is worth a deeper look. The "claims" section of the patent is even more impenetrable than usual:
A method for displaying content, comprising: receiving input that
defines a set of perspectives, wherein each perspective in the set
of perspectives is a cross category grouping of one or more content
items, and wherein said one or more content items is in a plurality
of content items; storing, in a database, the plurality of content
items, wherein each of the plurality of content items belongs to
one or more categories; receiving user input that associates
subsets of said set of perspectives with each of said plurality of
content items; and in response to a request to display a web page
that contains one of said plurality of content items, displaying on
said web page a selectable control for each perspective in the
subset of said set of perspectives that is associated with said one
of said plurality of content items.
Translated into English, this claim would appear to be describing a database-backed web site which allows the display of articles with category metadata and comments attached. Further claims add search capabilities, a form interface, etc. All pretty standard stuff. The "description" section is more readable, fortunately. It sets the stage with a summary of the Bad Old Days, when anybody who wanted to put content on the web had to hand it over to a site administrator who knew the right incantations. The administrator becomes a bottleneck which slows the process of getting content onto the net. Thus, says the patent:
Accordingly, it is desirable to generate a web site creation and
maintenance tool that permits non-technical people to publish
content on a web site. It is also desirable to generate a web site
creation and maintenance tool that apportions responsibility for
web site creation and maintenance task to the most appropriate
individuals.
One wonders why nobody else ever noticed this problem. But it seems that nobody did:
In the prior art, content contributors must go through the
information technology department in order to publish content. This
prior art methodology places content publication and maintenance on
a single source. In contrast, the web site paradigm of the present
invention provides for distributed control by, allowing the folder
owners ... to control content for a portion of the web site.
As an added bonus, Oracle's "invention" throws in web-based administration of the site, a "quick picks" navigation bar for the most-used content, a news box, etc. This patent clearly covers no end of free content management systems - and numerous proprietary offerings as well. There is no way that this particular patent could have been filed for in good faith; 2000, remember, was the end of the dotcom boom and content management systems were not exactly hard to find. The authors knew they were patenting widely-used technology which had been invented elsewhere. Oracle, after all, has not made its name through innovation in the web publishing arena. If Oracle were to attempt to enforce this patent, it could create trouble for anybody producing or using an allegedly infringing system: Linux distributors, web publishers, proprietary software houses, etc. With a determined effort, this patent could almost certainly be invalidated. But if you are a small publisher facing demands from Oracle's fearsome lawyers, invalidating the patent will look like a distant, difficult, and risky goal. For the time being, the threat seems low; Oracle seems more interested in acquisitions than patent shakedowns and litigation. In the future, however, when Oracle's core business has been gutted by free database management systems, the company might just take a new interest in enforcing its "valuable intellectual property." (Log in to post comments)
Just a question really Posted Jul 15, 2004 7:56 UTC (Thu) by PhilHannent (guest, #1241) [Link] Go large companies like Oracle pay out some sort of bonus to employees that file patents?
Just a question really Posted Jul 15, 2004 7:57 UTC (Thu) by PhilHannent (guest, #1241) [Link] Should read:Do large companies like Oracle pay out some sort of bonus to employees that file patents?
Patents: A Measure of Innovation Posted Jul 15, 2004 8:32 UTC (Thu) by pkolloch (subscriber, #21709) [Link] Didn't you know? Patents are the one and only true measure of innovation! Thus such boni are THE way to go to stimulate new ideas. Seriously: If the power of innovation in different countries/companies/whatever are compared, they usually use number patent filings as the most important measure. I always feel sick, if I see it, but I couldn't suggest them a better measure. True innovation is not measurable. As sad as it is: The measure aspect of patents might appear being a minor thing in this whole (software) patent struggle. Yet I assume many politicians just await the increased number of patent filings "proving" a big boost of innovation in their country with greedy anticipation.
Yes they do Posted Jul 15, 2004 9:19 UTC (Thu) by hingo (subscriber, #14792) [Link] At least Nokia does. I was surprised to learn that most of my friends are writing these kinds of patent applications as crazy, to get a nice christmas bonus. I've always wondered how people like the authors of this patent can live with themselves, but I could actually imagine myself writing such an application, if I got, say, a 1000e bonus for it. I don't know what the bonus actually is, but I'd imagine it's hundreds of e.henrik ingo, espoo finland
Yes they do Posted Jul 15, 2004 21:08 UTC (Thu) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link] At the company where I work, the employee gets the bonus when the company decides that the idea is worthy enough to start the patenting process. So I got a nice amount of money for the idea that later wasn't patented by our company - a rival company patented the same idea.
Just a question really Posted Jul 15, 2004 11:47 UTC (Thu) by ohanssen (subscriber, #2761) [Link] I dont know Oracle, but at norwegian universities, employees are stronglyencouraged to patent good ideas, the government offer to help in the patent application process. We can (in theory) be forced to patent inventions. We must tell a special board about inventions, which may decide to commercialise or patent them. This is a result of new legislation. No problem? Well, if the EU directive goes through with software patents, and if the current privatisation- and public-sector-budget-cut trends continue, I fear...
Just a question really Posted Jul 15, 2004 12:05 UTC (Thu) by mtk77 (subscriber, #6040) [Link] Yes. An Oracle employee friend of mine says that an accepted patent application is good for about $1K. (I think you used to get a framed copy of it too, but they are doing so many now that that became unfeasible.)
Just a question really Posted Jul 15, 2004 14:17 UTC (Thu) by MathFox (subscriber, #6104) [Link] They should send a framed copy of this patent to Slashdot! (previous art.)
Oracle's CMS patent Posted Jul 16, 2004 14:19 UTC (Fri) by arafel (subscriber, #18557) [Link] Is it just me that was thinking "well, that's on Slashdot ... and that .. and that..." all the way through?Not only Slashdot, in fact, but K5 as well. I can't imagine how they expect this one to stand up, unless there's something we're missing.
Oracle's CMS patent Posted Jul 16, 2004 22:38 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] I'm starting to get bored of press about ridiculous patents being filed.Now, I'd be more interested in news of ridiculous patents being enforced. And settlements don't count.
Oracle's CMS patent Posted Jul 25, 2004 17:59 UTC (Sun) by ringerc (guest, #3071) [Link] "when Oracle's core business has been gutted by free database managementsystems" I'm not convinced that'll happen. I'm not an Oracle user myself - I use PostgreSQL in my production work - so I suppose I'm an argument against my own opinion. Nonetheless, Oracle seems to be able to keep moving into new and interesting areas with their database tech. As OSS seems to only reach wide adoption in well-trodden technology areas I suspect Oracle is if not safe, then certainly safer than most. I expect they'll always have something to sell. I wouldn't be too surprised if they continue to see increasing pressure from the low end (as they're already feeling from MS-SQL and Sybase, and probably PostgreSQL now too). I also doubt it'll kill them ;-)
Oracle's CMS patent Posted Jul 25, 2004 20:46 UTC (Sun) by kelargo (guest, #23422) [Link] a quick look on the net for cpanel toolshows this http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/cpanel.html version [2000-10-11] Installed cpanel 0.1.2-1.1 (source i386) so there's prior art. does pubpat know about this?
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