Does your program use a coherent list? Pay license fees
The US Patent and Trademark Office does not cease to amaze us: in April 2006, it granted LSI Logic Corporation a patent for a linked list . Coherent lists are used in almost any program, which means that any development company in the US is theoretically under the threat of a lawsuit. However, it is unlikely that the company will be able to defend its “invention” in court, since the coherent lists appeared in the mid-50s of the last century.
Just in case, let me remind you what a linked list is. A linked list is a data structure, which is a set of elements, each of which consists of two parts: the actual data and the pointer to the next element. This is one of the simplest data structures, it is used everywhere, for example, to implement a stack, a queue, a hash, lists with gaps, etc.
The patent describes one of the varieties of the list, namely the doubly linked list . The elements of a doubly linked list contain two pointers: the next and previous elements. Thanks to this list can be viewed both forward and backward. Compare with the brief description of the patent: “The computer list is supplied with auxiliary indexes for traversing the list in different directions. One or more auxiliary pointers provide a fast, consistent list traversal with minimal computational time. Such lists can be used in any applications that require different sorting of the list for different tasks. ” It took the company four years to patent its algorithm. Perhaps they were just looking for someone at the Bureau who doesn't know about linked lists?
Just in case, let me remind you what a linked list is. A linked list is a data structure, which is a set of elements, each of which consists of two parts: the actual data and the pointer to the next element. This is one of the simplest data structures, it is used everywhere, for example, to implement a stack, a queue, a hash, lists with gaps, etc.
The patent describes one of the varieties of the list, namely the doubly linked list . The elements of a doubly linked list contain two pointers: the next and previous elements. Thanks to this list can be viewed both forward and backward. Compare with the brief description of the patent: “The computer list is supplied with auxiliary indexes for traversing the list in different directions. One or more auxiliary pointers provide a fast, consistent list traversal with minimal computational time. Such lists can be used in any applications that require different sorting of the list for different tasks. ” It took the company four years to patent its algorithm. Perhaps they were just looking for someone at the Bureau who doesn't know about linked lists?
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Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/86373/
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