"J2EE Design Patterns" is a technical (and deliberate) mis-naming of what really amount to a set of design idioms and domain-specific refactoring recommendations.
The naming is simply designed to get the attention of a wide audience. Seems like everyone has heard of a pattern, but far fewer people know that idioms are merely patterns that utilize language-specific features. And "refactoring" sounds too much like real work for many people to take an interest.
As you look through the J2EE "patterns" catalog, you'll undoubtedly notice lots of similarities to the GoF catalog. There seem to be not that many classic patterns that are fundamentally different. The J2EE names are meant to narrow the context of a simple (and familiar) pattern to a common problem in servlet/JSP/EJB development.
[ September 09, 2003: Message edited by: Michael Ernest ]