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Article #1073Re: SUID Patent
From: John Mashey
Date: Sun, 05 Oct 1986 21:58
Date: Sun, 05 Oct 1986 21:58
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In article <231@ima.UUCP> trb@ima.UUCP (Andrew Tannenbaum) writes:
>It rubs me the wrong way to see the creators of UNIX being dragged
>through the dirt for patenting SUID. You aren't going to see Dennis
>Ritchie saying "Oh yea? I did too create the SUID idea." I think SUID
>was patented in an attempt to protect the UNIX kernel from theft - you
>sell an illicit copy of the kernel, you violate patent law.
Although I have no idea whether or not it was true in this case, it
certainly was true that there were times at BTL (and elsewhere) that
there were big pushes by the internal lawyers to generate patents on
anything conceivable, for good and reaonable reasons. This was standard
practice in the hardware side; whenever software patents were a hot topic,
there was often a strong push to find things that were software patentable,
not necessarily by those who generated the software.
Note: this is no criticism of anybody, including the lawyers who sometimes
tried to push patenting things that software people that were crazy.
This area of the law has been a confusing quagmire for a long, long time.
--
-john mashey DISCLAIMER: <generic disclaimer, I speak for me only, etc>
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<508@elmgate.UUCP> <64@mit-prep.ARPA> <15665@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <4794@ukma.uky.csnet> <404@vaxb.calgary.UUCP> <231@ima.UUCP>Show Full Headers
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Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!utzoo!mnetor!seismo!columbia!rutgers!sri-spam!sri-unix!hplabs!pyramid!decwrl!glacier!mips!mash From: mash@mips.UUCP (John Mashey) Newsgroups: net.micro.68k,net.arch Subject: Re: SUID Patent Message-ID: <714@mips.UUCP> Date: Sun, 5-Oct-86 17:58:24 EDT Article-I.D.: mips.714 Posted: Sun Oct 5 17:58:24 1986 Date-Received: Tue, 7-Oct-86 21:05:58 EDT References: <508@elmgate.UUCP> <64@mit-prep.ARPA> <15665@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <4794@ukma.uky.csnet> <404@vaxb.calgary.UUCP> <231@ima.UUCP> Reply-To: mash@mips.UUCP (John Mashey) Organization: MIPS Computer Systems, Sunnyvale, CA Lines: 22 Keywords: (SUID Patent)