A lot of patents give you a bunch of alternative implementations and component definitions, which can muddy the waters a bit. On the other hand, the figures can help you a lot.

The big issue is that it's a protocol, not a system. I.e. it's detailed only because it specifically _does not specify how to build anything_. Were they required to actually specify how to build something, i.e. a server that implements this protocol rather than the protocol itself, this would be woefully insufficient.

How are the mappings stored on disk? Does this entire protocol genuinely lack authentication? How is this meant to fail over when a server dies? If it's distributed, how do the nodes reach consensus?

You can't just jam stuff like this into a doc:

> Also, each update is preferably performed atomically > to avoid creating an inconsistent state in the string Store.

They're just handwaving away how the data gets stored. Y'know, the part of the patent that's actually useful and does something.

What's left over after you discount the parts they don't specify is basically just a wire protocol for a KV store that doesn't exist. They might as well try to patent a method for making imaginary mittens for imaginary friends, because that's basically what this is.

Yeah fantastic, like an entire page devoted to showing requests that have numerical identifiers. Groundbreaking stuff.

And it's all completely irrelevant noise because you can infringe on the patent even if your implementation in no way depends on any of those details

The only thing that matters is the claims, and they're written so broadly and interpreted by the courts so creatively that a subject matter expert cannot read the document and determine if something does or does not infringe on it.

Seriously, how does Claim 1 not cover 99% of HTTP requests ever made given that people were using reverse proxies and passing requests between backend servers for decades before this patent was filed?