Frans Bouma's blog

# Patent Awarded for O/R Mapping Technology@ Wednesday, May 18, 2005 12:17 PM

TrackBack

# re: Uhoh, someone got the patent on O/R mapping...@ Wednesday, May 18, 2005 5:47 PM

And given that the "inventors" (sic) include Luca Bolognese and Andrew Conrad, it likely belongs to Microsoft.

Sure, they "invented" (rather, developed) ObjectSpaces, fair enough. But they didn't invent the underlying "principles" described in the patent. That is so ridiculous.

Software patents not only ought to be prevented in Europe, they should also be forbidden in the rest of the world. Honestly, what are they thinking?

Phil

# re: Uhoh, someone got the patent on O/R mapping...@ Wednesday, May 18, 2005 5:54 PM

Lol, that's laughable. I searched for a few names of the "inventors", and from brief inspection they seem to be Microsoft staff.

They must be quite proud of themselves for inventing the whole Mapping Architecture thing. How very very clever and original ;-)

MS probably only took the patent out for defensive measures, it's just so very sad that companies have to waste time and money on such things.

Tobin Harris

# re: Uhoh, someone got the patent on O/R mapping...@ Wednesday, May 18, 2005 6:00 PM

Interesting to see how all the "Inventors" seem to MSFT employees ... hmmmm

Ben

# re: Uhoh, someone got the patent on O/R mapping...@ Wednesday, May 18, 2005 9:26 PM

One word - Ludicrous.

Jónas Antonsson

# re: Uhoh, someone got the patent on O/R mapping...@ Wednesday, May 18, 2005 11:22 PM

doesn't prior art (wilson or mapper, your stuff, LLBlgen, and so forth) completely invalidate the patent?

its my understanding that it does, if the bonehead ever tries to extort money...

Eric Newton

# re: Uhoh, someone got the patent on O/R mapping...@ Thursday, May 19, 2005 2:29 AM

No, LLBLGen Pro or wilsonormapper aren't prior art, Objectspaces is quite old. The real prior art is in the java world and smalltalk world. O/R mapping is pretty old, and widely documented. You can't make me believe MS thought of it before the java guys did.

It will be interesting to see what the big guys at Apple, Oracle and Sun will have to say about this 'patent', because their products all violate it.

More ironic is that the Objectspaces wasn't inventive in any way. Everything in objectspaces as presented in 2003 was already done elsewhere years ago.

Luckily it's indeed MS who got the patent, which uses it for defense, but what if they feel threatened by Java that much that they will put this patent into gear to crack Hibernate's strong grip on the java world?

Frans Bouma

# re: Uhoh, someone got the patent on O/R mapping...@ Thursday, May 19, 2005 6:02 AM

Maybe they fear NHibernate ( http://www.nhibernate.org ), because they have seen how Hibernate came from nowhere and became one of the de facto standards in Java world.

Szokelizer

# re: Uhoh, someone got the patent on O/R mapping...@ Thursday, May 19, 2005 8:42 AM

Cases like this one are almost arguments in favor of patents. They make companies who claim them so stupid...

Fabrice

# re: Uhoh, someone got the patent on O/R mapping...@ Friday, May 20, 2005 5:44 AM

I hope you have read some of the other database related patents in freshpatents.com... there is really a lot of stuff to laught at

Piotrek

# re: Uhoh, someone got the patent on O/R mapping...@ Saturday, May 21, 2005 2:40 PM

So hopefully this won't have any effect on the beloved LLBLGen mapper.

This patent stuff is f~cking ridiculous

Bill

# re: Uhoh, someone got the patent on O/R mapping...@ Saturday, May 21, 2005 3:03 PM

@bill: I hope not either, but for now I think we're all pretty safe in O/R mapper land :)

Frans Bouma