🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <66150@sgi.sgi.com>, karsh@trifolium.esd.sgi.com (Bruce
Karsh) writes:
|> Does anyone really believe that anybody will invest in a scheme which
requires
|> that you raise capital, develop a product, bring the product to market, but
|> after 5 years the product can be copied freely?  It takes about 3
years just to
|> develop a mass-market software product nowadays.

Nonsense, Bruce.  Up until a few years ago the software industry operated
with the following assumptions:

1) You can't patent software.

The Patent Office summarily rejected all software patent applications until
relatively recently.  Yet there was a successful software industry.

2) You don't own a graphic user interface.

Check out the November, 1983 Byte magazine, Bruce.  In that issue the
designers of the Apple Lisa GUI happily admit that they went over to
Xerox PARC, looked at the GUI's there, went back to Apple and redid their
GUI to look more like Xerox.  They had no reason not to 'fess up; the
resemblance was obvious and based on accepted law at the time, they had
no reason not to; it was Xerox's fault that they didn't exploit the work
coming out of PARC better.

For some reason, almost all the software you're currently using was produced
without the protections you are claiming are required for a successful
software industry.

|> Software deserves the same protections as any other invention does.

Software is adequately protected by traditional copyright (of the code itself)
and trade secret rules.  The rate of independent re-invention in software
is huge.  Why should the patent for something that's been re-invented 50
times go to the outfit with the biggest legal department?  If I actually
look at your code and copy it, you've got a case.  Otherwise, go on and
write something else.

--
Joe Buck
jbuck@galileo.berkeley.edu	 {uunet,ucbvax}!galileo.berkeley.edu!jbuck