captsolo weblog

According to a blog post on bopuc/weblog HP now has a US patent for Semantic File System.

What is claimed is:

1. A data model represents semantic information associated with objects stored in a file system. The data model includes a first object identifier, a second object identifier and a relation identifier. The first object identifier identifies a first object stored in the file system. The second object identifier identifies a second object stored in the file system, wherein the second object is related to the first object. The relation identifier identifies a relationship between the first object and the second object.

6. The data model of claim 1, wherein the relation identifier comprises a property of the first object and the second object comprises a value of the property for the first object.

Basically, that is a patent for RDF applied to a file system - where subject and (optionally) object may identify objects stored in a file system.

Taking into account generalisations in other clauses of the patent, e.g. clause 6, and that "objects stored in the file system" are like any other resource, this is a patent for what has been out there for some time - Resource Description Framework (RDF) - a main building block of the Semantic Web.