Re: Utility window architecture question
Re: Utility window architecture question
- Subject: Re: Utility window architecture question
- From: "Erik M. Buck" <email@hidden>
- Date: Sun, 19 May 2002 15:13:32 -0500
There are lots of crazy US patents. The patent office is historically
understaffed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The existence of prior
art or common knowledge is supposed to exclude a patent, but the clerks at
the patent office have no knowledge of prior art or common knowledge. Once
a patent is granted, the only way to use the patented technology requires
licensing or expensive court battles in front of juries selected for the
lowness of their IQ. Subtle technical issues are seldom grasped by US
juries which are for the most part composed of the unemployed.
The US granted a patent on a general technique for implementing computer
networks by standardizing on either big-endian or little-endian byte order
for all words. A patent was granted for using the XOR bitwise operation to
implement temporary drawing. It is not supposed to be possible to patent
math! It is not supposed to be possible to patent discoveries as opposed to
inventions. Apple has loads of stupid patents.
From a companies point of view, it is in their interest to patent as much as
possible because it is inexpensive to file a patent and having patents at
least protects them from falling victim to their rivals patents. Only the
little guys get hurt by patents.
I advocate a blanket ban on all software patents. Software is a branch of
mathematics and mathematics is not patentable. Software is already
protected under copyright and trade secret law not to mention end user
licenses.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ondra Cada" <email@hidden>
To: "Brendan Younger" <email@hidden>
Cc: "Chris Giordano" <email@hidden>; <email@hidden>;
"Brock Brandenberg" <email@hidden>
Sent: Sunday, May 19, 2002 2:38 PM
Subject: Re: Utility window architecture question
>
On Sunday, May 19, 2002, at 09:32 , Brendan Younger wrote:
>
>
> I hate to throw down a good idea like this, but Adobe actually has a
>
> patent on this "technology". They just finished suing Macromedia over
it
>
> (and I have not idea what FCP has it, maybe they licensed it), but you
>
> ought to check the legality of it first.
>
>
Nonsense. Nobody can patent such thing -- if so, next time you could
>
patent using right-click for contextual menu. You can patent a solution
>
(complete with detailed description of how you did it), not a generic
idea.
>
>
Or did the U.S. patent law go entirely mad?
>
---
>
Ondra Cada
>
OCSoftware: email@hidden http://www.ocs.cz
>
2K Development: email@hidden http://www.2kdevelopment.cz
>
private email@hidden http://www.ocs.cz/oc
>
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