🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <JIM.90Apr5205848@baroque.Stanford.EDU> jim@baroque.Stanford.EDU (James Helman) writes:
>Could someone post a list of significant software patents and the
>legal "successes" or "failures" they have seen in the courts?

My favorite is IBM's patent 4,571,678,
titled "Register allocation and spilling via graph coloring."  
Inventor is Gregory Chaitin from Yorktown Heights, NY, 
the application date is 11/5/82, and the grant date is 2/18/86. 

It's one of a group of 16 or so patents filed by IBM as result
of their 801/PL.8 development.  They also mention things like
global common subexpression elimination and optimization of
array bounds checking.

I don't know of any court challenges.

Note that gcc's register allocator is not particularly
similar to Chaitin's work.  For that matter, the schemes
used by MIPS and HP aren't either, though HP may be paying
liscensing fees.

In RMS' original posting, asking that we oppose software patents,
he pointed out that free software will not be able to use patented
material.  Is this true?  Could the FSF perhaps sign licencing agreements
promising some portion of the profits? :-)

Can somebody explain how these things normally work?

--
Preston Briggs				looking for the great leap forward
preston@titan.rice.edu