From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,525be57bd7f45978 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!postnews.google.com!l41g2000cwc.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail From: "rien" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Ada syntax patents Date: 23 Feb 2005 00:56:27 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: <1109148987.384389.187240@l41g2000cwc.googlegroups.com> References: <421b581b$0$13221$9b4e6d93@newsread4.arcor-online.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: 217.136.235.42 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" X-Trace: posting.google.com 1109148991 18437 127.0.0.1 (23 Feb 2005 08:56:31 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2005 08:56:31 +0000 (UTC) In-Reply-To: <421b581b$0$13221$9b4e6d93@newsread4.arcor-online.net> User-Agent: G2/0.2 Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: l41g2000cwc.googlegroups.com; posting-host=217.136.235.42; posting-account=JGTmxw0AAAB8_L5zFsL15G1SjsLVU94b Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:8467 Date: 2005-02-23T00:56:27-08:00 List-Id: Georg Bauhaus wrote: > about compiling the BASIC IsNot operator, Patent Application 20040230959. the patent covers the IsNot operator as a single operator. but if we write "Not( A Is Nothing )" then we are not under the term of the patent... > What's this? What are they trying to protect? Is something > like this on the way for Ada? > Interesting, everyone with an interest in a software exchange > with a US resident/whatever will have to consider whether they > can use comparison operators without being US-charged, patent > (im)pending. we may consider patenting the "+" operator, it would be fun... how about patenting the principle of tokenizing a file and parsing it to produce an executable file ? more seriously, is there a way to protect ourself from such a patent ? and what are the implication of such a patent ? consider for example the ability to declare a task in Ada to do some concurrent execution: there is no patent on it and we use it in Ada since 1983. if someone decide to patent this kind of construct, can we legally break the patent on the fact that they have not invented anything and it has been in use long before they tried to patent it ? if it is still patented, will it prevent us from using this construct in our softwares (rendering Ada far less powerful) ? how could they ensure we are not under the term of such a patent ? (i'm not a lawyer and i don't understand anything about patents...) -- rien