These patents (5,729,730, 6,151,604, 6,163,775, and 6,182,121) are a group and are interesting to Linux because they describe an object-oriented management layer that resides on top of an hierarchically-organized set of data. The patents apply to data management (that potentially enable a disconnected management layer to reside on top of databases, file systems, XML and operating system components), search engine marketing (that potentially enable the required joining of orthogonal sets of data at the keyword level) and (document management (that potentially enable features such as branching, merging, user-level document control and multi-authored documents).
WHAT'S NEEDED: REQUEST FOR INFORMATION
Prior Art
Products On Sale, Offered for Sale or Publicly Used Prior to August 4, 1997
December 10th, 2008
This patent application was filed on August 4, 1998, resulting in an earliest date of invention of August 4, 1997. While it is possible that the invention did not occur until after August 4, 1997, finding relevant prior art before that date assures it application. Such prior art may include products embodying the invention that were sold, offered for sale, or publicly used by the patent holder, an inventor, or any third party prior to August 4, 1997.
The IBM HPFS. It was jointly developed by Microsoft and IBM, but Microsoft abandoned it to break compatibility with OS/2.