Piggy Bank and US patent US2005165789

From: <barnabus_at_centralpets.com>
Date: Sat, 04 Feb 2006 19:25:49 +0000

Are you aware of US patent US2005165789 "Client-centric information
extraction system for an information network"?

On a brief scan through, it seems it may cover the work you're doing
with Piggy Bank.

I'm sure you're more familar than I am with the excellent work of people
at USC and Fetch Technologies, Inc. (fetch.com) on e.g. the "STALKER"
algorithm for "wrapper induction". If I didn't regard the whole
software patent system as a net loss, I might regard the STALKER patent
of Muslea, Minton and Knoblock (6,606,625) as reasonable (that patent
does not cover Piggy Bank or Solvent, I assume...). This one, from
Minton and Pelz (US2005165789), although of a far higher standard than
many, still seems to me to be just another on the incredible pile of
chaff that is software patents :-( No doubt the same people have a
bunch of other patents in the field.

Seems both patents are US-only. In particular, I notice the "STALKER"
patent was filed after publication at an ACM conference, so I assume
non-US patents for that are not on the cards. I didn't check for
publication of the claims in US2005165789.

I wonder how you people at MIT see it (this patent, and the patent issue
in general as it relates to your work and others' in the same field)?
Received on Sat Feb 04 2006 - 19:25:06 EST