Absurd Patent on Log Management

Reading this makes it pretty clear why sooooo many want to overhaul the US patent system. It is a patent titled "System and method for analysis and management of logs and events," which is choke-full of trivia and prior art. Here is the excerpt (full here):

"SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

[0023] According to one aspect of the present invention there is provided a log record analyzing system for monitoring a log record from at least one computerized system. The log record analyzing system comprising:

• a pattern repository adapted to store more than one pattern object record of different grammar types and
• a parsing engine associated with the pattern repository.

The parsing engine comprises:

• a raw log data input for receiving raw log data,
• a matching unit associated with the input for matching between the raw log data input and
• one of the pattern object records, and
• an output for outputting a parsed structured version of the raw log data using a structure extracted from the matched record. "

Wow, this is truly new ... circa 1978 :-)