RE: [xml-dev] Patent on streaming evaluation of XPath

["Len Bullard" <cbullard@hiwaay.net>]

Mike:

The practice of patent evaluation is to use prior arts to narrow patent
claims.  It's not a zero-sum.  It's whittling.  Every piece related to any
claim counts.

Gather ye rosebuds.

len

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Kay [mailto:mike@saxonica.com] 
Sent: Thursday, June 18, 2009 5:52 PM
To: 'Christian Nentwich'; xml-dev@lists.xml.org
Subject: RE: [xml-dev] Patent on streaming evaluation of XPath

> This patent troubles me. It is sits squarely on a key 
> requirement for high performance XML processing. I think it 
> will trouble some of you, too. If anybody understands how 
> prior art can be submitted for this (these pages are unclear 
> about whether the patent is granted), I would very much like 
> to hear from you, and so would the USPTO...


There's certainly been a vast amount of published work on streaming XPath
evaluation, including published papers from within Oracle that substantially
pre-date this patent application.

I'm afraid I really don't understand the patent system or its arcane
language well enough to know how broadly or narrowly defined the claims of
this patent are. Presumably if it's very broad, covering almost any way of
doing streamed XPath evaluation, then it's invalid because of prior art;
whereas if it's very narrow, then an independent implementation of streamed
XPath evaluation is unlikely to run foul of it,