Re: AT&T Threat against X Windows freedom

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Article #74692

#74692

From: Russ Nelson
Date: Sat, 02 Mar 1991 04:44

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In article <BURLEY.91Mar1110527@albert.ai.mit.edu> burley@albert.ai.mit.edu (Craig Burley) writes:

   MOST software patents, I'm told, boil down (and the boiling process
   is itself tedious, because patent lawyers ensure patents aren't
   readable) to laws of nature, obvious things, or prior art.

Perhaps, perhaps not (I'm not sure).  Atkinson's regions patent boils down
to "Represent a region by a list of points.  Each point flips the inclusion
of every point below and to the right of it."  Given that description
(which may not be a law of nature, obvious, or prior art), I believe
that any competent programmer would reinvent Atkinson's methods for
manipulating regions.

--
--russ <nelson@clutx.clarkson.edu> I'm proud to be a humble Quaker.
It's better to get mugged than to live a life of fear -- Freeman Dyson
I joined the League for Programming Freedom, and I hope you'll join too.

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From: nelson@sun.soe.clarkson.edu (Russ Nelson)
Newsgroups: gnu.misc.discuss
Subject: Re: AT&T Threat against X Windows freedom
Message-ID: <NELSON.91Mar1224409@sun.clarkson.edu>
Date: 2 Mar 91 04:44:09 GMT
References: <861@nddsun1.sps.mot.com> <TREE.91Feb27122612@sadye.uvm.edu>
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In-Reply-To: burley@albert.ai.mit.edu's message of 1 Mar 91 16:05:27 GMT

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