I was recently reviewing a B2B Exchange Software provider's site and saw that the company had applied for a patent on their technology, which was basically meant to provide asynchronous communication between EJBs. Two thoughts come to mind:
1. Since it is possible to implement asynch messaging between EJBs using Messaging middleware like JMS etc., is it really appropriate to patent any process which could potentially use these software components to achieve aynchronous communication? I mean, there is no new invention here, just a creative way of combining existing technologies.
2. Most of the Java related software is free, as is the technology : when someone uses such freely available software to create a process or a program is it ethical to apply for a patent on that process? I mean if someone really implemented a new or more efficient way of asynch messaging shouldnt the entire development community need unfettered access to it?
can you post the url of that company ?
it's a very interesting issue - asynchronous communication between EJBs. we are thinking of ways to implement is (using jms) whith scheduling and all the matters concerning asynchronous (and we don't have the time wo wait to ejb 2.0).
The url is http://www.nextset.com. They are a Business Exchange Software production company. You might have also seen the article in TheServerSide which talks about using the Fiorina Message Server to implement Asynchronous communication across EJBs.