A Future Without the Web? [Reprise]

This is the second document with this title, although this one is slightly different. In the others, I have tried to outline how key "technologies" would have ended up patented, but for an accident of time. In this one, I'm going to try to outline how a patent on a key technology that is not fictional is going to affect us, should the company with the patent choose to enforce it.

The company in question is Interwoven, who produce a product called TeamSite. TeamSite is what is commonly referred to as a version control system, or VCS. The idea of a VCS is that it acts as a repositories for all your files like your hard drive, but instead of just holding the files themselves, it also holds all the edits that you ever made to the files. So, with a VCS, you could look at a file at any point in time - if you wanted to look at the original version of a document before you started editing it last week, you can pull that out.

The patent (Link to the USPTO published version of the patent) is entitled " System and method for website development", and is described thusly:

A system and method for file management is comprised of hierarchical files systems, referred to as "areas." There are three types of areas: work areas, staging areas, and edition areas. A work area is a modifiable file system, and, in a work area a user can create, edit, and delete files and directories. A staging area is a read-only file system that supports select versioning operations. Various users of work areas can integrate their work by submitting the contents of their work area to the staging area. In the staging area, developers can compare their work and see how their changes fit together. An edition is a read-only file system, and the contents of a staging area are virtually copied into an edition to create a frozen, read-only snapshot of the contents of the staging area. One use of the system and method for file management is as a website development tool.

For those who work in the field of web design, some of this might sound horribly familiar. Well, it's likely that you use a tool already. The above is lawyer-speak; what would it be in plain English? Well, luckily, Interwoven provide us with one without me having to write one - it's available as the introduction to their press release, and says:

Interwoven's Proven, Patented Technology Vital to All Internet-based Initiatives Including Enterprise Portals, eCommerce, Self-service Applications, and CRM

Okay, it doesn't exactly make it clear what it does, but basically, if you run a portal, an e-commerce site, or some other type of web application, it's likely that it covers you. What it covers is virtually all types of "content management system". Content management systems (CMSes) allow you to update the information displayed on the website very easily, they allow you to separate the design of the site from the information displayed, and are crucial to any moderately complex website of modern design.

So, if the UK accepted software patents, and this patent was granted, anyone using a CMS to control their website - from the big players like Amazon right down to the SMEs - would find that they would likely owe Interwoven licence fees for the use of this patent. Or, Interwoven could prevent people using "unlicensed" CMS software (e.g., software not produced by Interwoven), in which case they would destroy the marketplace for CMS software. The amount of damage would be proportional to how aggressively Interwoven enforce this patent, and it will be interesting to see what the fall-out of this patent will be.