🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <28455@cs.yale.edu> choo-young-il@CS.Yale.Edu (young-il choo) writes:
>
>
>What exactly has Storer patented?  My understanding is that algorithms are
>not patentable, only processes.
>

  Sure, the patent is couched in terms of a hardware implementation
  and written in *extreme* legalease.  Sigh.  I seriously doubt that
  any software developer could derive the algorithm from the 
  patent specification.  I had a copy of the patent here but, I 
  deleted it because it took up to much space.  
  
  This has been a big debate for a while.  I saw a posting from
  someone during the summer in news.admin where he actually called
  and spoke to a Unisys executive.  Said exec apparently was not
  even aware that LZ compression was even used in a 'free' software
  tool that is on _all_ Unix systems.  

  Is AT&T infringing on Unisys's patent?  Would AT&T settle out 
  of court to prevent a general debate on patents that could put 
  the entire concept of software patents in jeopardy ?  Remember 
  that AT&T has many patents of it's own including one on the 
  concept of a 'Backing Store' that  puts X11 in violation of 
  AT&T's patent.

  I find it very significant that a *major* patent infringement by
  one of the biggest corporations in the US has gone unchallenged
  by another major US company that holds that patent and that said
  patent holder has chosen, for the moment, to ignore the 
  infringement.  ;-)
  ...

  P.S.  What do _YOU_ think of software algorithm patents ???
-- 
 +-  Bill England,  wengland@stephsf.COM -----------------------------------+
 |   * *      H -> He +24Mev                                                |
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