I was amazed to read this post on slashdot earlier today !
Everyone who used pointers at least once in its life knows about linked list.
From the patent :
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention overcomes the disadvantages and limitations of the prior art by providing a system and method for traversing a list using auxiliary pointers that indicate the next item in a sequence. The sequential list may be created in one sequence, but used in a second sequence without having to resort the list.
Have you heard about doubly linked list ? Are you using doubly linked list in your programs ?
Well ... doubly linked list is a way to use a sequential list in another sequence without having to resort the list, this another sequence
is simply the reverse one !
Hey, guess what ? this looks like a patent violation !
Believe it or not, those guys from the patent office did not think there was prior art, so they awarded US patent 7028023 to Wang Ming-Jen from LSI corporation on 04/11/2006
If this patent had been awarded on April first, this would have been a good joke ... unfortunatly, this is a real patent ...
I strongly believe patent on software is a bad thing for ideological reasons, and now i can read such a basic and obvious thing can be patented ...
isn't there something going wrong here ?