Patentes, patentes, patentes…
(Se bem que em matéria de patentes a IBM sempre foi campeã, mas não sei quantas vezes ela já processou algum concorrente - ou ameaçou processar - devido à violação de alguma patente.)
Dessa vez é algo que faria o pessoal do Hibernate e das implementações de JDO terem de pagar alguma coisa, ou então retirarem seus produtos do mercado.
Microsoft Now Owns OR Mapping Industry via New Patent
http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?thread_id=34025
A group of inventors have filed a patent on systems of mapping data structures (AKA ORM) using XML or other structures that run on a computer.
The patent is described with the following extremely generic language:
The patent is A data mapping architecture for mapping between two or more data sources without modifying the metadata or structure of the data sources themselves. Data mapping also supports updates. The architecture also supports at least the case where data sources that are being mapped, are given, their schemas predefined, and cannot be changed.
What this means to current ORM vendors is not yet understood, nor is how a patent could be obtained on a process that has been around for years and implemented by dozens of other projects.
