How Yahoo won the Bedrock patent trial that Google lost (Thomson Reuters) [LWN.net]

How Yahoo won the Bedrock patent trial that Google lost (Thomson Reuters)

Posted May 13, 2011 7:07 UTC (Fri) by butlerm (subscriber, #13312)
Parent article: How Yahoo won the Bedrock patent trial that Google lost (Thomson Reuters)

"Bedrock's Linux code"? You mean they actually wrote it? Or is this just patent attorney doublespeak?

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How Yahoo won the Bedrock patent trial that Google lost (Thomson Reuters)

Posted May 13, 2011 14:37 UTC (Fri) by pharm (guest, #22305) [Link] (8 responses)

It's patent attorney doublespeak: claim "ownership" of the code in question, even if someone else wrote it without ever seeing the patent in question. It's all part of the "patent rights are legitimate property rights" mindset.

I think this: http://www.google.com/patents?id=X4QXAAAAEBAJ&printse... is the patent in question. The actual claims are at the end of the patent.

How Yahoo won the Bedrock patent trial that Google lost (Thomson Reuters)

Posted May 13, 2011 17:04 UTC (Fri) by salvarsan (guest, #18257) [Link] (1 responses)

Re: patent 5893120

The claims are for a method of using of hash tables with linked lists
for hash collisions, and deletion of expired nodes (garbage collection).

Doctor Dobb's Journal published equivalent source in the late 80's.
How did Bedrock ever get a 1997 patent for that?!

What's next? Will they stripmine some fundamental algorithms from Knuth,
Sedgewick, et.al., string them together in a few object classes, and patent
the results?

How Yahoo won the Bedrock patent trial that Google lost (Thomson Reuters)

Posted May 13, 2011 17:20 UTC (Fri) by clump (subscriber, #27801) [Link]

Sssh! There are patent trolls among us!

How Yahoo won the Bedrock patent trial that Google lost (Thomson Reuters)

Posted May 13, 2011 18:37 UTC (Fri) by butlerm (subscriber, #13312) [Link] (4 responses)

It's patent attorney doublespeak: claim "ownership" of the code in question

It's not their code then - someone else has the copyright on it. Patent infringement or no, if Bedrock copied and distributed the code in question in violation of the license, they would presumably be guilty of copyright violation and be subject to significant legal penalties. Claiming that it is "their code" is slander of title, and an outright fraud.

How Yahoo won the Bedrock patent trial that Google lost (Thomson Reuters)

Posted May 14, 2011 0:55 UTC (Sat) by wahern (subscriber, #37304) [Link] (3 responses)

Since there wouldn't be any actual damages (it's free!), nor any profit from which to make restitution, anyone who sued would have to elect for statutory damages.

The maximum for statutory damages is $30,000 ($150,000 for willful infringement), plus maybe attorney's fees. Statutory damages are per *work*, not per infringement. So I'm sure they'd be happy to cut a check for $30,000 from their $5,000,000.

How Yahoo won the Bedrock patent trial that Google lost (Thomson Reuters)

Posted May 15, 2011 4:58 UTC (Sun) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link] (2 responses)

A while back I helped prove to a judge that Open Source developers do suffer real economic damage from license violations and can claim more than statutory damage. But the issue is probably moot in this case, when Bedrock says it's "their" code they are only talking about the patent.

How Yahoo won the Bedrock patent trial that Google lost (Thomson Reuters)

Posted May 16, 2011 13:41 UTC (Mon) by butlerm (subscriber, #13312) [Link] (1 responses)

Bedrock doesn't own any "code" here though. They have a government granted monopoly on an algorithm. Claiming to own someone else's code is a fraud. If it were my code, I would be inclined to sue them for slander of title, especially since trivial changes are probably all that would be necessary to escape their patent dragnet.

How Yahoo won the Bedrock patent trial that Google lost (Thomson Reuters)

Posted May 16, 2011 14:17 UTC (Mon) by Trelane (guest, #56877) [Link]

> They have a government granted monopoly on an algorithm.

s/\./ and any implementations thereof./

HTH.

How Yahoo won the Bedrock patent trial that Google lost (Thomson Reuters)

Posted May 16, 2011 11:25 UTC (Mon) by kevinm (guest, #69913) [Link]

It seems that even if this patent is held to be valid, it could easily be worked around. All you would have to do is mark the expired records for later deletion, rather than deleting them immediately - all the claims in the patent are explicitly for removing the expired records at the same time as searching the list.