Bob Stewart - IBM Alert Patent

IBM's Claim

Claiming their U.S. Patent 4,965,772 gives them a right to royalties, IBM has been accosting companies who implement SNMP notifications. In a nutshell, this patent lays claim to the idea of an asynchronous event causing the sending over a network of an alert that contains a number identifying the event and that an operator display can then use that number to select a text message for display.

To be blunt, hogwash. Digital Equipment Corporation's DECnet Phase IV had such a mechanism, publicly documented in 1983, some years before the IBM patent application. I know because I was the designer of that feature and the author of the public document.

Fair Use

It is my considered opinion that most software patents are a crock and an abomination. Far too often they attempt to lock up a fairly obvious or even old idea, not to protect truly inventive intellectual property but to give one company a club with which to beat, delay, or extort a competitor, in the end enriching only the lawyers. Not that I'm accusing IBM of such tactics.

I offer the information on this web page for the free use of anyone being so accosted by IBM. I ask no repayment, but if you found it valuable some acknowledgement in the form of email, or a check, would be appreciated.

Since Digital Equipment Corporation no longer exists, not to mention DECnet Phase V superceding Phase IV, this document is no longer available. I have a copy, one of the first off the press, that I keep as a souvenir of times and projects past. It was once available on line in machine readable form. If I ever find such again I will provide a link here.

Please do not request that I send you a copy of my document. I'm retired and not equipped to do so, not to mention the questionable legality of copying and distributing a copyrighted document. I'll stretch that point a bit on this web site by providing scans of key pages, including the title page and the copyright page.

This is an architectural specification, meaning it defines externally visible behavior for any DECnet Phase IV system. This architecture was implemented in multiple DEC operating systems as multiple, interoperable products.

Section 5.5, beginning on page 127, specifies the operation of the Event Logger. It shows how asynchronous occurances in any DECnet layer on a networked system are collected and sent, unsolicited, to preconfigured local or remote receivers for disposition in various ways, including display on an operator console.

Section 6.13, beginning on page 170, specifies the Event Message Binary Data Format. Among other event details, it includes an Event Code, encoded as a number, which contains the Event Type and Event Class, thus clearly indicating what event took place.

Section 7.12, beginning on page 202, specifies Event Definitions. It includes the Event Type and Event Class numbers and their corresponding standard text.

Section 5.5.2, beginning on page 132, specifies Suggested Formats for Logging Data, that is, output formats in human-readable form. It shows the use of the event identification numbers and standard text for an operator display.

Clearly IBM's idea was not new, and had in fact been shipped in many DECnet products.