I don’t know how this blog post showed up in one of my browsers, but it’s proof to me of how little most people understand software patents. And it was probably linked to by someone high profile who also doesn’t understand software patents. In this person’s view, there are these 2 patents that both patent the idea of ORM. Neither patent is for ORM. They are each for a way of performing ORM. You can’t patent the idea of generating code to perform the task. You patent the method of generating code to perform the task.
In case you have trouble understanding the difference, let’s move to a hardware patent as an example. Say, one for a VGA controller card. These people didn’t patent VGA controller cards. In fact, the abstract specifies that they are hardware compatible to things already on the market. So, like the pre-existing cards, they can be put in between a computer and a display and talk the right way on both sides. And you can come up with something that does the exact same thing and get your own patent, as long as it does it in a different way than they do it. This is what is happening with there being multiple ORM patents. Each patent talks to a database and creates objects in a language, but the way they do it is different, so they get different patents. And you can come up with a different way and not infringe.
I’m not saying software patents are good (or bad). I’m just tired of seeing so much ignorant commentary on the topic. In science, I frequently see things that superficially look the same as what has been seen before. But I find when I probe deeper, there are crucial non-obvious innovations that separate the new idea. Acting like patents are always for extremely superficial things is unfortunate.
