[ILUG] patents: IBM does it again

[Justin Mason]

Here we go again... The Register has described this sort of thing in
the past as "IBM pissing on its shoes".  Best description I've heard.

On one hand, IBM says they support the free software community; on the
other hand, it's picking up patents like this:

    A software tool is provided for use with a computer system for
    simplifying the creation of Web sites. The tool comprises a plurality
    of pre-stored templates, comprising HTML formatting code, text, fields
    and formulas. The templates preferably correspond to different types
    of Web pages and other features commonly found on or available to Web
    sites. Each feature may have various options. To create a web site, a
    Web site creator (the person using the tool to create a web site) is
    prompted by the tool through a series of views stored in the tool to
    select the features and options desired for the Web site. Based on
    these selections, the tool prompts the web site creator to supply data
    to populate fields of the templates determined by the tool to
    correspond to the selected features and options.  Based on the
    identified templates and supplied data, the tool generates the
    customized Web site without the web site creator writing any HTML or
    other programming code. Based on roles-based, multi-level security,
    certain users of the web site may have access to certain information
    and others may not. 

IE. a HTML editor which will create a page, based on a wizard.  Great.

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/search-bool.html&r=10&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=ft00&s1=HTML&OS=HTML&RS=HTML

IBM really need to get their patent "strategy" (ie. land grab) under
control...  >:(

--j.