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:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 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 * ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 8: explain analyze is your friend ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 9: the planner will ignore your desire to choose an index scan if your joining column's datatypes do not match
