Patent for a modeling method????

OH BOY, I cannot believe this sort of thing could happen:

According to Cadcamnet.com:
"Delphi has filed for 15 U.S. patents on its horizontal modeling
methods. If they are granted, only way that U.S. CAD users will be able
to employ horizontal-modeling methods is to take training licensed by
Delphi."

If you have read anything about Delphi's 'Horizontal Modeling' methods,
you know this is really nothing new. It is only a modeling METHOD or
BEST PRACTICE GUIDE that can be applied to any history based modeler.
Many of us users have already used these same methods on our own. Now,
Delphi is just formalizing the concept and claiming it for themselves!!!

Sure, Delphi may be taking some smart modeling methods (which they term
'Horizontal Modeling') and expanding it and formally documenting it, but
can they really PATENT this?

Tell you what, I am going to patent the the way I hold a pen. That way,
every time someone holds a pen in the same manner, they will have to pay
me royalties!

 

Yeah I read that and we had a good laugh over it. And just for the record,
this will server as public copyright intent, we're planning to pursue
patents on the following modeling methods so don't even think about it:

- Diagonal Modeling (like turning it up to 11)

- Angular Modeling (start out vertical, switch to horiz, then back to
vertical)

- Spiral Modeling (similar to angular but the specs change daily and the
tree gets bigger and bigger every day)

- Z axis Modeling (the tree comes straight out toward you. you never know
where a feature lives cause you can't see it, unless you're a virtual
engineer. it's impossible to make a mistake. similar to the old SDRC
Master Series tree)

- Eddy

 

They could make just 1 with 15x more claims.
They did so to force you (?) to attack the patent in court 15x, which will
cost 15x more and take 15x more time.
Clever...

Lawyers replaced engineers at USPTO. They charge for filing the patent, not
for examining it.
Then you solve conflicts in court, with more money to attorneys...
I was told that half of the lawyers in the World are US...

If you are rich enough to protect your patent in court, do it!
Someone even reached to patent the wheel!
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/1418165.stm)

In Switzerland some time ago we had Albert Einstein himself working at the
patent office...

 

Yes, we have so many lawyers here that they will soon be used
laboratory experiments. There are some things rats simply will not do.


bill

 

Unfortunately for Delphi I disclosed this method to SW management in Orlando
last winter as a means to speed up the rebuilding of the feature tree.

This is the original disclosure:
To speed up rebuilding in SW simply model a few features on a base feature,
then roll back to where you started and model more features. Since each set
of features has the same parent and no realation to the previous tree it
should be possible to use parallel processing methods to speed rebuilding.

With the advent of multi-bodies this method should become even more powerful
because multiple disjoint bodies can be built without even the single
common parent.

Either of these methods should make troubleshooting and rebuilding quicker
by keeping the feature tree simpler.

The other thought that comes to mind is that CATIA explicitly allows this
method in its feature tree.

 

You are absolutely right about Catia v4 already doing this, the Catia
feature tree is dveloped just like a family tree and whole branches can be
disabled in the update process, they have had this since at least 1996