🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1991Feb25.043755.17220@algor2.algorists.com> jeffrey@algor2.algorists.com.ALGORISTS.COM (Jeffrey Kegler) writes:
>
>The courts are bound to realize, eventually, how this new industry of
>filing patents on obvious and generally known techniques and then
>launching well-financed suits that paralyze innovation is legal
>nonsense.  It could take them a decade, however.  In the meantime, the
>US software industry could be in turmoil.  And the chances that our
>foreign competition will be this stupid, vile and self-destructive are
>terribly close to zero.

Sorry to inject some facts into a good tirade, but in other countries -
most notably Japan - software has been patentable for some time. There
is no sign whatsoever that the trend is changing.

While picking on the big guys, how about going after Technowledge Inc.
for pat no. 4,648,044 on basic AI techniques, IBM for pat. no 4,646,250
on the "Data Entry Screen", and of course Rene'K. Pardo and Remy Landau
for U.S. pat no. 4,398,249 which covers all of the spreadsheet programs
(and was issued Aug. 9, 1983)?

Frankly I fail to see why getting paid for original work is so upsetting
to some people.

I am not a lawyer so this is not legal advice!

-- 
           *Mike Waters    AA4MW/7  waters@nddsun1.sps.mot.com *
Crash programs fail because they are based on the theory that, with
nine women pregnant, you can get a baby a month.
		-- Wernher von Braun