If you develop software, and your company lives long enough, you can sometimes win patents for your innovations. Interwoven recently completed a U.S. patent for "System and method for website development." The patent, initiated 4 years ago, actually tells you a lot about what indeed makes Interwoven different. From the patent: "The present invention relates generally to hierarchical file systems and, more specifically, to a system and method for file management which can be used as a website development tool." Interwoven is smart to patent such innovations as its "workareas" concept. We're not patent lawyers, but it seems to us that some of the codicils about versioning and virtualization apply specifically to IWOV's proprietary "hierarchical file system," and we would hope that the company doesn't try to brandish the patent in such a way that CMS vendors hither and yon (that offer file versioning or virtualized reviewing capabilities) have to spend more on their barristers than they already do...
Review the Interwoven Patent at the U.S. Patent and Trade Office