Re: ARC patent

On 1/17/2005 1:15 AM, Tom Lane wrote:
> Neil Conway <neilc(at)samurai(dot)com> writes:
>> FYI, IBM has applied for a patent on ARC (AFAICS the patent application
>> is still pending, although the USPTO site is a little hard to grok):
>
>> http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%2220040098541%22.PGNR.&OS=DN/20040098541&RS=DN/20040098541
>
> Ugh. We could hope that the patent wouldn't be granted, but I think
> it unlikely, unless Jan is aware of prior art (like a publication
> predating the filing date). I fear we'll have to change or remove
> that code.
>
> regards, tom lane

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.

I am seriously concerned about this and think we should not knowingly
release code that is possibly infringing a patent.

If we need a different cache algorithm again, we might want to yank out
the ARC part right away now and work on another one for 8.1.

Jan

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