I work in the field of database systems design. Michael McKibben’s patent was overbroad and not novel. It is the same as “tags” in Gmail.
Sure FB may have a lot of dastardliness to its history, but McKibbens patent was not the source of the controversy. He had a patent that could never be enforced unless one could shut down Gmail, for example.
Yours is the very experience and insight needed in this discussion.
If McKibben did have something to do with germinating the concepts used in FB, and if he really DID, as per according to the article I cited, seek out competent patent counsel which was playing for the “Obama transform America” team, and was betrayed thereby, then that lawyer did so much harm to him, and to all of us by that betrayal.
It appears that lawyer muddied the waters so terribly that IF McKibben indeed was part of the genius behind solving system approaches to making a social media platform work, then he may never be able to be granted the fruits of his labor and idea, nor possibly others who also may have simultaneously came up with similar ideas and projects.
I am not from a computer tech background, and have not used Gmail, so I confess I don’t know what “tags” in Gmail might be. While I admire your analogy, I fear I do not understand it.