Re: ARC patent

Nov 2002 is the date of filing the patent application, while May 2004 is the publish date. For regular patent application, the USPTO will treat that application with secrecy for the first 18 months of the examining process. About 18 months after the application, the USPTO will publish the patent application.

For most companies with deep pocket, they never publish new papers/ideas without filing a regular or provisional patent application first.

-----Original Message-----
From: Andrew Dunstan [mailto:andrew(at)dunslane(dot)net]
Sent: Monday, January 17, 2005 3:14 PM
To: John Hansen
Cc: Zeugswetter Andreas DAZ SD; Jan Wieck; Tom Lane; Neil Conway;
pgsql-hackers
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] ARC patent

John Hansen wrote:

>>>Unfortunately no. The document that inspired me to adapt ARC for
>>>PostgreSQL is from the USENIX File & Storage Technologies
>>>
>>>
>>Conference
>>
>>
>>>(FAST), March 31, 2003, San Francisco, CA.
>>>
>>>
>
>Ahemm,... Isn't the patent lodged on may 20, 2004, AFTER you read the document from the above conference?
>
>

The patent claim was filed on *November 14, 2002 according to the docs.
It might have been updated in May 2004, or some other action, but the
filing date is the one that counts. You can certainly trust IBM not to
let their guys preclude a patent they intend to file by doing prior
publication.

cheers

andrew
*

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