🚀 go-pugleaf

  I'm taking a graduate course this summer in human factors / performance  
engineering and we're just starting to cover ethics and the law.  Well,
last Wednesday we were covering the some court cases (VisiCalc vs Lotus,
Lotus vs. Mosaic (makers of Twin Spreadsheet) & Paperback Software (makers
of VP Planner) and their outcomes.  All of these cases are copyright issues
and not patent infringements.

  It turns out that a patent *was* granted in 1974 for creating the process
of a global recalculation.  He (our instructor did not mention the man's 
name) was given a patent because, at that time, they accepted the 
implementation of a global recalculation as a *process* and not as the
expression of an idea on a medium (i.e. a copyright).

  Lotus, and anyone else for that matter, that has implemented a global 
recalculation in their program(s) is in danger of being sued also.  Whoever
has this patent has 1 more year (17 years for a patent) before renewal and
if the party that has it now doesn't, you can be sure that Lotus knows about it
and have the expiration date (the last day the current owner is eligible
for renewal before anyone else can claim it) marked on their calendar.

  An interesting side note that was mentioned in class was that Lotus
"appears" to pick courts to file in where they know the judge is known
for *not* knowing a thing about computers or software.  I believe our
instructor mentioned LA County as one of their favorite filing locations.

  Please correct me if you find any inaccuracies in this message.  I was
trying to relay some information relative to the current court battles
that I have not seen mentioned in gnu.misc.discuss. 

  Oh, yeah, standard disclaimer...I don't speak for my professor.  All this
is new to me and I could have introduced some inaccuracies by relaying
bad class notes :-).  


-----------------------------
Steve Hite
...gatech!uflorida!unf7!shite