Re: ARC patent

Jan Wieck wrote:
> 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.

Oh, OK. Good news!

> 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.

If you want to poke around for 2 hours, I bet you wil find more patent
infringements. And not looking doesn't protect you from patent
violations. What is the point of removing this one. Just because Neil
did some legwork. Anyone could do some legwork and find some in any
software, I bet.

--
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