This is an extremely narrow patent that doesn't do anything like claiming all uses of null pointer exceptions. It just claims what strikes me as a rather minor optimization on how attempts to dereference a null pointer can be detected. It surprises me a little that it was considered worth patenting, but I guess it is fairly general in that it could be used in a lot of language implementations. The benefit is hardly worth writing home about, though.

My tongue was firmly in cheek.

Oops! Sorry, I missed it :-)

What the fuck.