Time To Rewrite a Few Million Pieces of Software

This isn’t exactly news, but I just read about it today on another blog. Someone managed to get patent #7028023 for “a computerized list is provided with auxiliary pointers for traversing the list in different sequences”.

This is a doubly linked list. Something you’ll find in any introductory programming book. A basic data structure about as common as an array.

It’s hard to believe the patent examiners wouldn’t be able to find the prior art for this. Even without a background in computer science, searching a couple of the key words from the patent, like “list” and “pointers”, would eventually bring you to an example of this.

Posted on March 19, 2007 in Programming, Stumbling

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  • http://www.lessthanhumble.com/ Robert Norton

    Wow – the person that approved the patent as you note is a dumbass. I guess time will only tell if the person tries to go after infringers…

  • http://www.mysiteonline.org/ Brendon Kozlowski

    I’m really beginning to think that the patent offices should hire a few people from each major industry to try and alleviate the bad press they’re getting, as well as stop this from happening as often as it does.

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