Oracle patents content management systems [LWN.net]

Patent 6,745,238 was awarded to Oracle in June; it is titled "self service system for web site publishing." "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." This patent was filed in March, 2000; prior art should, one would think, be relatively easy to find.

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Oracle patents content management systems

Posted Jul 12, 2004 15:14 UTC (Mon) by marduk (guest, #3831) [Link] (1 responses)

Slashdot seems to be the same "invention" and goes back as far as 1997. Yahoo arguably fits the description and has been around since 1994.

Oracle patents content management systems

Posted Jul 12, 2004 15:31 UTC (Mon) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link]

Zope would also be a key item as it falls more into the db backend, allowing a user to control ones stuff, etc.

Oracle patents content management systems

Posted Jul 12, 2004 16:47 UTC (Mon) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link]

PlainBlack's WebGUI certainly predates it. I'm pretty sure BroadVision, even though it sucks,
is older than that. And hell, Pitas probably qualifies.

Certainly Zope, though more the things which sit atop it, which aren't as old.

Oracle patents content management systems

Posted Jul 12, 2004 16:49 UTC (Mon) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link]

And hell, much as I think Dave Winer's a flake, Frontier predates this, too. Even for website
publishing, though that wasn't Frontier's initial thrust.

Oracle patents content management systems

Posted Jul 12, 2004 16:58 UTC (Mon) by ccchips (subscriber, #3222) [Link] (5 responses)

Do the people who work at the USPTO actually know how to do anything?

Oracle patents content management systems

Posted Jul 12, 2004 17:48 UTC (Mon) by newren (guest, #5160) [Link]

Of course they do. They know how to approve patent applications that shouldn't be approved.

Oracle patents content management systems

Posted Jul 12, 2004 18:48 UTC (Mon) by marduk (guest, #3831) [Link] (2 responses)

I hear they're very knowledgeable people and know how to do their jobs. The problem, I think, granting patents is their business and business is good.

Oracle patents content management systems

Posted Jul 13, 2004 5:12 UTC (Tue) by darkpink (guest, #19896) [Link] (1 responses)

This is precisely the state of affairs. In fact, they brag about their profits. It's all about the cash. In my opinion, that's gotta be a philosphy that trickles down from the people in charge over there.

Wouldn't it be great if there was some sort of penalty for an employee at the patent office who granted a patent that was successfully invalidated?

For some reason I'm reminded of a passage from the bible: "Forgive them, for they know not what they do."

I can't forgive this, but then again I'm not the almighty JC.

*WTF* !?!?!

Oracle patents content management systems

Posted Jul 13, 2004 10:04 UTC (Tue) by jeroen (guest, #12372) [Link]

There is actually penalty, rejecting patents has a penalty. It involves a lot more work, because they have to write down why they rejected it, etc. Granting patents is a lot easier. At least this is how the EPO works, but I suspect the USPTO doesn't work a lot differently.

Oracle patents content management systems

Posted Dec 15, 2004 20:07 UTC (Wed) by WMartin (guest, #26700) [Link]

I use to work at the USPTO and know they wouldn't have known what they were reading. I'm very shocked that it did receive a patent since they would have to consider all of the other CMFs out there. But with all laws there are loop holes. My biggest question is what Oracle hopes to gain when their system mirrors Zope/Plone and everyone else? *Zope Rules!!*

Prior art?

Posted Jul 12, 2004 20:51 UTC (Mon) by chel (guest, #11544) [Link]

MP3.com used a CMS in 1997.

Oracle patents content management systems

Posted Jul 12, 2004 22:05 UTC (Mon) by ltilby (guest, #22998) [Link] (3 responses)

How many of the afore mentioned software packages were
ever submitted for patents? There is a LOT of good
software out there that has never been patented. From
my own experience, if a type of product has never been
submitted for a patent, the patent office will not
know about it.

However, the writers of the afore mentioned software
could sue for copyright enfringement! Perhaps a
class action suite would be in order?

Oracle patents content management systems

Posted Jul 13, 2004 12:05 UTC (Tue) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]

For one thing, a free software can easily easablish prior art because all versions are published, and often many of the discussions in mailing lists prior to the publication are published.

Granting a patent is a long process in which some lawyers get some money for something that is basically doesn't worth much to the developer.

Oracle patents content management systems

Posted Jul 13, 2004 12:35 UTC (Tue) by chel (guest, #11544) [Link]

"From my own experience, if a type of product has never been submitted for a patent, the patent office will not know about it."
Then it time to apply for a patent om the wheel.

Oracle patents content management systems

Posted Jul 13, 2004 13:53 UTC (Tue) by dpash (guest, #1408) [Link]

I'm sorry. How could they sue for copyright infringement?

How about Wiki?

Posted Jul 13, 2004 3:18 UTC (Tue) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

Isn't Wiki a CMS too? Aparently, it has been around since 1995.

http://www.wiki.org/wiki.cgi?WhatIsWiki

Maybe USPTO can invest in an Internet connection and a PC. Maybe then they wouldn't issue idiotic patents like this. BTW, wasn't Oracle against software patents?

Patent office view?

Posted Jul 13, 2004 3:57 UTC (Tue) by mgh (guest, #5696) [Link]

Maybe the USPO thinking goes like this:

- we recieve dumb patent
- we do prior art searches on our patent files only
- no one has patented this yet so we allow patent
- if its challenged there is no cost to USPO
- anyone wishing to prevent use of their IP must patent or we will give the patent to someoneelse.
- encourage more and more patents because we allow anything not already patented
- profit

Oracle patents content management systems

Posted Jul 13, 2004 5:37 UTC (Tue) by sitaram (guest, #5959) [Link]

Why hasn't anyone said "this is great!" ? I know there's a cost involved in fighting these things, but the more ridiculous patents get filed, the better it is in the long run, to show how badly the system needs fixing.

Or am I being too naive?

Oracle patents content management systems

Posted Jul 13, 2004 14:08 UTC (Tue) by jamesh (guest, #1159) [Link]

The easiest way to fix the patent system without requiring huge changes at the patent office would be to remove the assumption in law that a patent is valid. That way, there would be no problem with companies filing frivilous patents.

At the moment if you get sued for patent infringement, the onus is on you to prove that the patent is invalid. With the above change to the patent system, the party suing you would need to prove that their patent was valid.

While a company would still be able to submit overly broad patents, it would be in their interest to keep them narrow, since it would make it easier to prove them valid if they wanted to sue someone. Similarly, providing documentary evidence of the invention with the patent application would be in their interest, since it might be given more weight in a court case than contemporary evidence of the invention.

In this sort of system, it wouldn't matter if someone had a patent like this on content management systems, since if they wanted to enforce it they would need to show that they were first rather than the judge assuming they were first.

What's the penalty for knowingly lying in a patent application?

Posted Jul 13, 2004 23:43 UTC (Tue) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link]

This patent, filed in 2000, claimed nonsense like "In the prior art, content contributors must go through the information technology department in order to publish content." That kind of whopper, it seems, rises to the level of deception; Oracle evidently counted on getting patent examiners who don't know anything. They reference only patents, and don't reference other literature at all. The people who did this work know better. We need to find ways of going beyond getting patents of this type quashed; the people who file such patents should be made to pay the expenses for the damage this kind of thing causes.

It might be a good idea to contact the people whose names appear on the patent application, and ask them if they knew about sites like Slashdot, or wikis, in 2000, and ask them why they didn't mention this in the patent application. Busting people for lying about prior art is long overdue. Since the USPTO has too few resources to catch this stuff, there needs to be some other penalty.

Prior art

Posted Jul 14, 2004 3:03 UTC (Wed) by rvr (guest, #23034) [Link]

I talked about this a month and a half ago ;)

Oracle patents content management systems

Posted Jul 15, 2004 21:31 UTC (Thu) by rabideau (guest, #23079) [Link]

For those interested in such things here are some links the USPTO was unable to find and research. You'll see that CMS's pre-date the Oracle application by as much as a decade. :-o

http://bahai-library.com/?file=what_is_cms#3
http://www.infoloom.com/gcaconfs/WEB/philadelphia99/adams.HTM
http://www.reddot.co.uk/company/history.html
http://www.documentum.co.uk/about_us/content-management_company.html

...mark

Oracle patents content management systems

Posted Aug 2, 2004 18:32 UTC (Mon) by brianh59 (guest, #23685) [Link] (1 responses)

There is a lot of misdirected antagonism here. All prior comments seem to based on the misconception that the Abstract, quoted above, has anything to do with what is actually covered by the patent. It does not.

The claims of a patent dictate what is covered by a patent, and they are usually much, much narrower and more focussed than the abstract. For example, this patent's broadest claim is recited below. It is limited to support for "perspectives", which are cross category groupings of content items.

In the future, I recommend studying the claims of a patent before wasting effort on vented ire.

1. 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.

Oracle patents content management systems

Posted Aug 9, 2004 21:14 UTC (Mon) by daniel5o (guest, #23888) [Link]

I have recently studied the patent law and the claims of this patent and it appears that your comments hit a home run.

People are so quick to take news and commentary at their face value without studying the real story. The claim is a lot narrower than the text in the Abstract. I must also add that this patent, description and claims, is much more readable than others I have come across.