http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-P...S=PN/7,069,308

Friendster patented digitalized info from social networks, i.e. storing
data about the relationships between people in a pc. If you think about
it, most web searchers, like google and altavista, store relationships
about people from webpages o blogs... For example, take fotolog. Google
would visit someone's fotolog and store that person's friends in its
cache. Both fotolog and google are "using" this patent.

The worst news are about the extreme generality of this patent. You have
the link above in this post...

Does anybody control the technical quality and the "nonobvious"
attribute of a patente. I am wondering... how can you patent a thing that
is already in the public knowledge, has no real inventive and is that
general??????????

This is serious. May the flying monster be with us. Ramen.

Mauricio Nivaldo Andres Monsalve Moreno wrote:
Right, what you describe is a big problem in many people's eyes.

You might enjoy reading this web site:
http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/

Regards,
Bill K.

Mauricio Nivaldo Andres Monsalve Moreno wrote:

As best I can tell they have patented a table with two foreign keys to the
same parent, aka a cross-reference.


--
Kenneth Downs
Secure Data Software, Inc.
(Ken)nneth@(Sec)ure(Dat)a(.com)