Patent reads a little different then the comments here are suggesting. He's not patenting bitfields, he is patenting a method of making bitfields perform the same way across compilers. He even uses the term bitfield to describe his invention. Article title is misleading.
Actually, I'm happy to hear that. The more ridiculous patents come to the surface the shorter it will hopefully take before patents will be either reformed or abolished.
Gotta read the _claims_ before judging the patent.<p>Here's something I posted last month explaining how claims are like AND statements -- if even one element of a particular claim is missing from a method or device, then the claim doesn't cover it: <a href="http://www.ontechnologylaw.com/2010/04/how-patent-claims-work-a-variety-of-different-and-statements-all-ord-together/" rel="nofollow">http://www.ontechnologylaw.com/2010/04/how-patent-claims-wor...</a>
There's a list of "references" with links to other patents. I don't know if this patents references them, or vice versa. But one of them is case-insensitive matching:<p><a href="http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6675354.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6675354.html</a><p>I just noticed, this is an IBM patent. What are they playing at.<p>Here's the flowchart for this "invention":<p><a href="http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6675354-0-large.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6675354-0-large.jpg</a>
> Filing Date: 12/10/2001<p>I thought of patenting well-known, widely-used techniques (e.g. doubly linked lists) as something that happened back in the 80s and 90s, but it seems I was wrong.<p>They cannot honestly believe this will stand up to scrutiny, and I understand that filing a patent isn't free, so what on earth are they hoping to accomplish?
Softwar patents are absurds and broke the system completly<p>More info at <a href="http://patentabsurdity.com/" rel="nofollow">http://patentabsurdity.com/</a>
This is actually insane. If I know it correct you cannot patent discoveries. I always find it funny that people are patenting algorithms. Come to think of it, it is indeed a discovery. Even addition has an algorithm (x*n = add x, n number of times). Imagine if someone patents multiplication and his son does not get it in his math class he will just walk up to him and say "Hey dad can you ban my school from teaching multiplication we own it anyways why give it away to everyone?"