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Originally Posted by AirSluf
Patents also do not protect ideas, they protect implementations of ideas where those implementations are not obvious to those competent in the art. Thus it is very legal to have two things that do the same thing but have sufficiently different implementations. ftp+script seems a bit high level for calling it the implementation level.
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well, they mention in the patent that it must use a non-proprietary protocol. it was the first one i thought of.
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Also existing implementations of a technology before a patent is granted tend to lead to revocation when the proverbial stuff hits the fan. The patent office does not like the appearance of granting patents to run of the mill stuff and will pull-em faster than they grant them. They are not a first to the blackboard wins all operation, they are a first truly new and non-obvious extension of the art wins operation. Something VERY few IP lawyers have been able to convince their boards of yet. Plus if they did, they would be out jobs because there wouldn't be many lawsuits anymore.
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in theory, the uspto is as you describe. but its not always the case in life. if the patent office had cs professionals on its staff, they likely would have noticed this brazen patent, or amazon's one from a couple of years ago, ms' double-click and countless others. and many small or nonprofit organizations may not have the resources to fight patents even with obvious prior art in the wild.
/me wishes the world was rid of the idea of software patents.