🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1991Mar2.191440.6458@digi.lonestar.org> jgay@digi.lonestar.org (john gay) writes:
>From article <873@nddsun1.sps.mot.com>, by waters@nddsun1.sps.mot.com (Mike Waters):
>> {and if YOU can keep the attribution straight ... }
>>>A patent search will be of little use with software if you are trying to
>>>ensure your code doesn't violate any patents, because a) it won't reveal
>>>pending patents, or patents not yet applied for; 
>> I assume that you concede that the COST isn't the factor then? 
>For me and alot of other software people cost IS the factor.  This I
>believe also applies to the FSF, most if not all small software developers,
>and shareware/for-the-fun-of-it software people.

As I recall, the posting previous to the one you edited explained how to
do a search for under $10. You can do one VIA Dialog for around $15 if
you want to get fancy. Do you really claim that you can't afford $10
before bringing out a whole new product?

>I would like to get an idea of who is going to be in line to sue me
>for some trivial piece of software that I came up with on a Saturday
>afternoon.

No one - patent or no it simply isn't worth the trouble. Despite the
hysteria.
 
>> If no-one has filed a patent then publication (i.e. in the program
>> documentation, specification oreven the code itsefl!) prevents anyone from
>> patenting it. What is the problem?
>
>This has not prevented what started this thread - the backing-store patent,
>which (according to the LPF article in DDJ) was first implemented at MIT
>in the LISP machine years before the patent was applied for by AT$T.

As I read their manifesto (no author, and unpublished), the court heard
that testimony and rejected it as "unproven" because they couldn't back
up what they said!

I tend to agree with the court unless someone can show me different.
(And hysterical "gloom and doom" won't do it).
 
>> I am not aware of ANY compiler smart enough to "invent" what wasn't
>> already there.
>Then you obviously have not looked at compiler output from a good globally
>optimizing compiler.  

Yes I have, I have also talked at some length with some very good
compiler writers (IBM & DEC), EVERY compiler outputs things in EXACTLY
the way it was programmed to. ZERO innovation. (Unless there is a bug).

>> particularly. Ham radio gets along fine with circuit patents.
>                ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>I don't think that I understand your statement here.  What does a hardware
>product's patents have to do with a hardware component's patents other than
>the product is made of the components?  As far as court awards for patent
>infringment, I believe that courts award on damages to the sueing company.

My point is that hardware patents have existed for a very long time, yet
no one has been sued for using a patented circuit in his own ham radio
gear. Ham radio has numerous small companies (MFJ was one person for
around 10 years), all doing quite well patents or no. The best of them
in fact depending on their patents to survive.

Why do you expect software/software companies to be different?

>> I wasn't aware of the deletion of "obviousness". Just because its
>> software certainly doesn't make it obvious.
>To go back to the backing-store patent, you don't think that it is obvious

I haven't read the patent, but the concept APPLIED TO A CURSOR ON A CRT
was certainly not obvious to me when I built my first micro system in
1970.

Just because you can "invent" say penecilin today does not mean that you
have done anything worthwhile, nor does it make the idea obvious.

>> was quite innovative AT THE TIME FILED!
>      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>Yes, but the backing-store and XOR cursor are not innovative.  The XOR
>patent is a mathmatical law.  

So put up YOUR money and get it overturned!

Several courts have heard this argument and rejected it (according to
the LPF that is).

>Which is one of the reasons that backing-store was not developed until
>it was.  In order to save what your window looks like you have to have
>someplace to save it.  For a computer this is usually memory.  Until
>recently it was not cost effective to be able to have enough memory on
>a system to save a window to.

Nonsense. If it was as obvious and a "law of nature" as you claim then
it would have been invented anyway on a smaller scale.

>> But we still have almost identical operating systems, substituting such

>A lot of these radical hardware ideas were done by software people who

The fact remains that the hardware has changed radically  while the
software hasn't changed nearly as much. Could it be due (even partly)
that the hardware people couldn't make money unless they invented
something new because the old ideas were patented?
 

>In the account that I read (LPF) the USPTO took a court case (Diamond vs.
>Deihr) that was about the usage of a computer program in the process
>of the curing of rubber, generalized and broadened it and then started
>issueing patents for software.  The court case had nothing to do with software,
>just whether the usage of a computer program in a rubber curing process
>(I guess to keep track of chemicals, timings, etc.) was enough to make the
>process unpatentable.  The court ruled that the process was patentable.

I'm not sure what this refers to. It is one step in about a dozen that
led to software patents in their present form in the US.

>> Sounds like the problem is easily fixable though, hire some CS types.
>
>Yeah, kinda obvious isn't it (hey, maybe I should patent that - the idea that
>you should actually hire someone qualified for a job), except that the
>patent office refuses to hire CS people.  For CS type patents or anything else.

Again I ask - from where does your information come? Your own conclusion
or do you really have some information on the subject.

>> What has made the industry grow BTW is the drop in hardware prices,
>> software has done nothing whatever to cause this. That is why the
>> percentage of total system cost due to software has gone from insignificant 
>> in 1950 to the dominant cost today.
>
>Yeah, I guess the development of such things as spreadsheets (now every
>business person has to have a computer), word processing software (now
>every secretary has to have a computer), graphical user interfaces (now
>every idiot can be computer literate and has to have a computer) and such
>have had nothing to do with the huge growth in the computer industry.
>Just try taking all the software off of your computer and turning it on -
>you now have a large electrical door stop.  

I'm not sure what all this hass to do about the question of innovation.

>The hardware prices have dropped
>so much because of volume production along with innovation and better
>techniques.  

Due at least in part to hardware patents! Why should patents encourage
hardware innovation and "kill off all innovation in software"?

>I don't know if I speak for my company - nobody here will even give
>me the time of day (or night).

No comment.