Apple's mobile phone language Swift has some sort of "optionals chaining" that Apple finds novel enough to patent.
From the discussion, it appears Apple is intentionally using an Apache 2 license to ensure that access to this feature remains freely available. (Insert obligatory IANAL disclaimer.) Any Soylentils care to weigh in?
https://forums.swift.org/t/apple-is-indeed-patenting-swift-features/19779
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @12:37AM
Sounds like the SQL Coelesce operator, which is part of the SQL standard I believe.