Considering Amazon, Google (Froogle), CNet, Ebay and just about every other major commerce site uses facets these days and the idea is as old as Ranganathan, in my mind it's pretty clearly not about protecting any sort of trade secret or technological breakthrough but being able to quash competition. Your patents don't have to be enforceable to be used as a tool against competitors. I'd like to see them try and go after the Apache Foundation, though...
Any library interested in purchasing Endeca's product should give some serious thought as to whether that company's business model is compatible with the values that libraries and librarians hold dear. To quote one of the pre-eminent philosophers of our time, "There's no justice; there's just us".
--Casey
>>> rochkind_at_JHU.EDU 1/31/2007 8:14 AM >>>
I think if there's any justice those patents won't be enforceable in
court. They are overly broad, and there is plenty of 'prior art'. But
I've learned not to assume there's any justice. And for many entities, a
legal threat is good enough to stop them in their tracks, even if it's
not on firm legal ground.
But I think the market for facetted search is in fact very broad, and
only going to get broader. And not just within the library world,
certainly (remember Endeca is not a library market company! Most of
their customers are not library market). But the library market is what
I'm familiar with, and organizations/products currently providing
facetted search include:
OCLC's worldcat.org
Polaris's OPAC
The incipient Primo product from Ex Libris
Koha's OPAC
Evergreen's OPAC
Many of these arguably fall under Endeca's "guided navigation" patent. I
don't know if any of them are paying license fees to Endeca, but I know
some of them definitely are not.
With a little research I could find you information school research
projects providing facetted navigation very much like Endeca's---from
before the company Endeca even existed.
But the thing is, Endeca's 'guided navigation' isn't actually that
technically complex. And they are charging a huge bundle for it. So my
guess is that their business model is 'patent'.
We'll see what happens. Hopefully some company with big pockets (not
neccesarily in the library market) will fight these patents in court
instead of settling. But I'm not super optimistic. The way patents work
is pretty broken right now.
Jonathan
Steve Toub wrote:
> Hi--
>
> I hope this isn't too terribly off-topic.
>
> Both Endeca and Siderean have been awarded patents on aspects of faceted
> navigation.
>
> Endeca's is U.S. Patent No. 7,035,864
> <http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=7,035,864.PN.&OS=PN/7,035,864&RS=PN/7,035,864>
>
>
> Siderean's is U.S. Patent No. 7,146,362
> <http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?u=%2Fnetahtml%2Fsrchnum.htm&Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&r=1&l=50&f=G&d=PALL&s1=7146362.PN.&OS=PN/7146362&RS=PN/7146362>
>
>
> I'm wondering if someone with an understanding of legal language and the
> patent process than provide insight on what impact this might have on
> next-generation discovery systems that provide faceted navigation. Also,
> does anyone know what they plan to do with these patents?
>
> My very stab in the dark--after attempting to read these several times
> and having my eyes glaze early and often--is that the patents do seem
> broad. But I can't imagine the market for faceted navigation software is
> terribly large and I wouldn't expect anything more than these vendors
> trying to bop each other on the head. And that it's prohibitively
> expensive for either of them to try to enforce their patents on any open
> source discovery systems that the library community that do this
> (Evergreen, Koha, Solr Flare, etc.)
>
> --SET
>
--
Jonathan Rochkind
Sr. Programmer/Analyst
The Sheridan Libraries
Johns Hopkins University
410.516.8886
rochkind (at) jhu.edu
Received on Wed Jan 31 2007 - 12:37:10 EST