🚀 go-pugleaf

(Kent Williams) writes:

|1. Can you enforce a patent after the piggies are out of the barn?
|There are probably more than a million sites with working binaries of
|compress, and many derivative works, including most of the MS-DOS
|archive programs.  I know that trademark and copyright law are
|different, but LZW data compression has been quite effectively
|genericized, kleenexed, and xeroxed.

They sure are different. Patents are protected bye the patent
and the courts, but not necessarily by timely use thereof, as
in the case of trademarks and copyrights.

The inventor of the laser just recently was awarded SERIOUS
royalties on every laser manufactured, because the army had
taken it over, and then let everybody use it. The lawsuit
was late, but it didn't matter.

Of course, given the climate of the courts these days, they
may well decide to make you an indentured servant of Unisys,
as well as return the entire country to the Indians, if Unisys
decides to sue...

Miles O'Neal
{uunet | emory}!rsiatl!meo (home)
meo@sware.com              (work)
{uunet | emory}!sware!meo  (work)