Distributed source code management system patented?

Has been the Git / Mercurial / Bazaar idea patented?.

Some days ago I was surfing Google and Google scholar to look for academic references regarding to distributed software development. However, it was quite surprising to find a patent from the USA describing the way a distributed source code management system work.

Specifically, this patent was born in 1997 and can be found as a Google search.

After having a look at the document, it is still not clear if a piece of software such as Git or Mercurial are kind of “illegal” because of this patent in the USA…

Patents and the mobile market

Quite interesting the post in Google’s blog about their point of view of software patents and how the Android technology is being “attacked” by specific companies that are buying more and more patents.

A couple of sweets:

Patents were meant to encourage innovation, but lately they are being used as a weapon to stop it.

Unless we act, consumers could face rising costs for Android devices — and fewer choices for their next phone.

So, probably Google is exactly pointing to the problem: software patents and how they were supposed to be, but how they really  are.

Let’s think about how this may affect the business model of  SMEs which can not reply as Google, Samsung or HTC do…

Thanks to  Xataca for the pointer.