This is an idea that solved a seemingly intractable problem with mesh-based multi-computers. In the late 80’s and early 90’s folks were experimenting with ways to build large multi-processors using a physical grid as the interconnect – Intel supercomputers use this approach. The idea was that the connection was like city streets laid out on a grid and that the messages would zig-zag around the streets like taxi’s. Many approaches were tried and under heavy traffic they got deadlocked. It was just like in a big city when traffic backs up and blocks an intersection and that that traffic is also blocked by other traffic – we call it “gridlock” when applied to traffic. Many people tried to figure out how to solve this with really complex approaches to the deadlock problem. It was very difficult and very hard to prove that many of these approaches were deadlock-free.
The actual *Innovation/Invention* (as distinct from the patents)
A short version is that around 1990, Michigan State University student Christopher Glass was working on his thesis and wondered if a very simple approach of making the messages go as far in the X direction as they could before making a turn into the Y direction. This was deadlock free and provably so – and much easier to implement in hardware than any of the other approaches previously proposed.
This is a brilliant idea and an innovation that will save people money. I don’t believe this was ever patented or even applied for by the “inventors”. All they did was got a thesis, wrote a zillion papers and got some NSF grants.
References:
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?coll=GUIDE&dl=GUIDE&id=514204
ftp://ftp.cps.msu.edu/pub/crg/PAPERS/msu-cps-acs-33.ps.gz
If you are curious as to the very novel and revolutionary idea really works and why it is provably deadlock free, see this document – and read pages 6-10.
Someone did get a patent: 7,072,976 (Go to http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.htm) – This patent was filed January 4, 2001 and granted July 4, 2006.
But if you look at this patent, it references tons of prior art – including academic work from over a decade earlier – including the paper I reference above.
Since in software patents – only a jury can interpret a patent – who cares what my opinion as an expert in the field is. Just try to read this patent yourself and form an opinion as to whether this was novel or not and you will see why jury trials in many software patents are a joke.
Note: None of this story is intended to imply anything bad about Lee S Whay. The reality is that ideas were coming fast and furious in this field in the late 80’s and early 90’s – everyone Lionel Ni, Bill Dally and others were just writing inventing and publishing as fast as they could. I am a personal friend of Lionel Ni and through that relationship in the 1990’s I knew of their innovation and papers. This is not about getting credit where credit is due. I think that Lionel would be very very pleased that his work was referenced in these patents. Please do not think this is about any tension in the situation I am describing – look in the conclusion – this is about patents – not this particular idea. Also – no one did anything wrong in this story – to the contrary – everyone in the X-Y routing saga is being 100% forthright and honest. I just so happen to have special knowledge about this particular idea and how it was discovered and published so it is easier for me to research the evolution of this idea in the US Patent Office.
Cold Case Detective for X-First Routing
Lets see how this X-First Routing idea travelled through space and time and ended up in a patent…. First some background research – print all this stuff out and make a binder if you want to be a detective with me.
Go to this URL:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/search-adv.htm
Enter these searches:
IN/Lee AND IN/”Whay S” (A search for all the patents filed by Lee S Whay)
“lionel ni” (Searches for all patents which mention Lionel Ni)
IN/lionel AND IN/ni (A search for all the patents filed by Lionel Ni)
Also go to the URLs of the players in our little drama:
http://cva.stanford.edu/people/wslee/ (The guy now working at Sun who filed all the patents)
http://www.cse.ust.hk/~ni/ (The thesis advisor of the guy who did the innovation)
http://cva.stanford.edu/billd_webpage_new.html (The *top* guy in the field and Lee Whang’s mentor)
Timeline –
1991 – Working for Lionel Ni, Christopher Glass “Discovers X-First routing” and publishes a sweet paper
1993 – 1998 Lee Whay seems mostly interested in microprocessor Architecture – working with luminaries like Bill Dally at MIT and then Stanford
199? – 1999 Gets Phd at Stanford – Mechanisms for Efficient, Protected Messaging – Awarded February 1999
March 9, 1999 – Lee makes a presentation at SUN
2000 – Lee Whay starts filing patents for Sun starting with 6,510,050 – The initial topic seems to be storage arrays and then he moves into message passing.
Here are the patents where Lee S Whay is an author *and* Lionel Ni is mentioned in the prior art.
6,718,428 Storage array interconnection fabric using a torus topology
6,741,561 Routing mechanism using intention packets in a hierarchy or networks
6,826,148 System and method for implementing a routing scheme in a computer network using intention packets when fault conditions are detected
6,883,108 Fault-tolerant routing scheme for a multi-path interconnection fabric in a storage network
6,925,056 System and method for implementing a routing scheme using intention packets in a computer network
7,000,033 Mapping of nodes in an interconnection fabric
7,027,413 Discovery of nodes in an interconnection fabric
7,072,976 Scalable routing scheme for a multi-path interconnection fabric
Lionel Ni is mentioned in 17 patents 8 of which were filed by Lee S Whay. Lee S Whay filed 19 patents of which 8 reference Lionel Ni as prior art.
Conclusion and Summary
So lets cut to the chase: Is Lee S Whay a bad guy for filing a ton of patents closely related to other people’s work and claiming that it was innovative?
Answer: Absolutely not! Lee was 100% honest in every patent he filed – he had been a thorough student and knew the field intimately for nearly ten years before he filed his first patent. His patent applications are magnificent summary of prior art both inside of the patent arena and inside of the academic arena. His last patent 7,072,976 references 53 patents dating back to 1989 and 27 academic references that include the “who’s who” of seminal breakthroughs in the mesh routing. His references suggest that he not only knows the field but knows the individual innovators as well.
Why – because these patents are just follow on work to his Phd. Thesis at Stanford. To get a Phd – you must know what has gone before and you must prove innovation beyond the prior work to a committee of arguably 5-6 of the top 100 researchers in the field – for Les S Whay – I am guessing the Bill Dally was on his committee – Sheesh. Once you past Phd. muster at Stanford with Bill Dally on your committtee, a patent examiner is simply coasting downhill.
I know this field (or at least knew it in the early 1990’s) – If I were a patent examiner and sitting across the table from Lee S Whay – and reviewing patent 7,072,976 – I would give him the patent – even though I *HATE HATE HATE* software patents in general.
I would have granted patent 7,072,976 because I knew that this patent was useless as an offensive patent – completely useless. Because Lee S Whay had the integrity to reference all the prior art he knew of – he made it easy for a patent defense lawyer – to fight against this patent. In effect these patents openly and readily admit that whatever innovation is being proposed is a “tiny improvement” on what has gone before.
As a matter of fact, the law states that Lee S Whang *had to* reveal prior art he know about (from http://www.bitlaw.com/source/37cfr/1_56.html) – or the patent would have been invalidated:
“…. Each individual associated with the filing and prosecution of a patent application has a duty of candor and good faith in dealing with the Office, which includes a duty to disclose to the Office all information known to that individual to be material to patentability as defined in this section. … The Office encourages applicants to carefully examinethe closest information over which individuals associated with the filing or prosecution of a patent application believe any pending claim patentably defines, to make sure that any material information contained therein is disclosed to the Office. ”
So Lee S Whang – revealed all the prior art he knew about. If he did not list the Ni work a decade earlier – there is no way in this world that he would have been “caught” – because he was an expert – he could hide evidence as easily as reveal evidence. But he revealed *all* the evidence and *still* made his case how his patent claims were an innovation in the light of the great body of prior art.
By acknowledging the real body of prior art work two things happen: (1) the patent examiner has some chance a determining novelty and (2) once approved – the work of Liolnel Ni has far less “shock value” when presented in court against the Whay patent – Whay and his attorneys simply say, “of course we knew about your work Dr. Ni – we listed it in the patent – DUH!!!”.
This combination of a completely honest assessment of prior art *and* a simple and clear innovation that goes “a little beyond” the prior art results in the perfect defensive patent on Sun’s part. This patent would e *very very* useful in case Sun wanted to build a mesh based interconnect (perhaps for storage arrays) and wanted to use X-First routing.
What if some small piss-ant company like NastyChuck, Inc went and filed a patent in 2006 on X-First routing because I knew Lionel and realized today that Lionel *never* filed a patent on it and then I went to sue Sun and Intel – Sun and Intel would have plenty of patents to trounce me.
Lee S Whang has placed solid evidence in the public patent record that this innovation is “sort of covered” by a Sun patent – but more importantly if I search and find the Sun patent – I will be led directly to the much earlier public record of folks like Bill Dally and Lionel Ni in the early 1990s that made all these innovations wildly public.
So Lee S Whang (and Sun Microsystems) has done us all a great service – Lee effectively went in and used his intimate knowledge of the Mesh routing area to create an interlocking web of patent filings around message routing. Sun will likely never make a penny off these patents – but more importantly no one else will. And most importantly of all no company will be able to get a “win-the-lottery” patent and stall innovation by holding the real innovators hostage.
With a patent office that pretty much will approve anything for a software patent as long as the margins are the right width – and a jury system in western Texas that is so wise that it can support the patent holders claims without even reading the patent – honest and decent people have no choice but to “clog the system” with these pre-emptive defensive patents. But very importantly – for this to work – those patents need to be *honest* and truly refer to the true prior art across both the patent field and the academic publication world.
Thankfully Lee S Whang had his training in solid academic programs (MIT *and* Stanford) and the top mentors in the field (Bill Dally) and had the importance of “academic integrity” as part of his entire education. Now that he works for Sun – he still “tells the whole truth and nothing but the truth” and makes sure that the work that he does for his company – while it is beneficial to his company – it also has integrity – because it has his name on it too. Conveniently it also is the right thing to do according to Chapter 37 of the code of Federal Regulations (http://www.bitlaw.com/source/37cfr/1_56.html).
So what does this have to do with Patent 6,988,138
Patent 6,988,138 references twelve other patents and zero non-patent documents as the patent applicants assessment of the prior art for the patent.
Here is a list.
5263869 May 1991 – Interactive Communication Systems, Inc. (Milwaukee, WI
Interactive group communication system (basically instant messaging by going into a lab and using computer terminals)
5437555 August 1993 – Discourse Technologies, Inc. (Milwaukee, WI)
The notion of distance education – A computerized teaching system is described including an interactive group communication system, wherein students interact with a teacher and the teacher can obtain quantitative reports on student performance without preprogrammed lessons and where a lesson program can be constructed from the responses of the students.
5537141 April 1994 – ACTV, Inc. (New York, NY)
Distance learning system providing individual television participation, audio responses and memory for every student
5918010 February 1998 – General Internet, Inc. (New York, NY)
Collaborative internet data mining systems
5973683 November 1997 – IBM
Dynamic regulation of television viewing content based on viewer profile and viewing history
6301462 June 1999 – UNEXT.COM
Online collaborative apprenticeship
6334141 February 1999 – IBM
Distributed server for real-time collaboration – Effectively Instant Messaging
6338086 – June 1998 – Placeware
Collaborative object architecture – “..Collaborative objects allow ubiquitous sharing and provides each user with the same copy of the shared object. Optimistic concurrency control allows full-duplex group editing and natural interactions..”
6347333 June 1999 – UNEXT.COM
Online virtual campus – This one is a bit interesting – I don’t exactly understand how 6,988,138 in its final form is novel beyond this patent.
6463460 – April 1999 – The US Secretary of the Navy
Interactive communication system permitting increased collaboration between users (shared whiteboard) software
6505031 – February 2000 – Slider; Robert (Longwood, FL), Robinson; Michelle L. (Longwood, FL)
System and method for providing a virtual school environment – This is getting close to 6,988,138 but it mentions parents so it is kind of K12ish.
Slider et al.
6546230 – December 1999 – General Electric Company
Method and apparatus for skills assessment and online training – Competency tests are stored on machine readable media and transmitted via network connections to remote provider systems, such as workstations or diagnostic systems
Final Words…
The summary here is that according to the filing of patent 6,988,138, on June 30, 2000 – based on what the inventors of this idea knew – the use of technology in education was pretty darn weak – there was barely any prior art.
The only thinge the inventors remotely about “a plurality of courses on a server” were: (1) Some dudes go into a lab in 1991 and use computers to talk – (2) in the early 1990’s we send classes out on TV sometimes – (3) sometimes we chat with students – (4) we use white board software some times – (5) we can send stuff to parents of K12 kids using software – (6) we can send people tests at remote locations – and (7) some of those tests are about competency.