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=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,a883dc07df0d6bb1 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: swhalen@netcom.com Subject: Re: Decoding an octet stream Date: 1999/12/03 Message-ID: <827a95$4ti$1@nntp3.atl.mindspring.net>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 556043878 References: <877lj2q36g.fsf@deneb.cygnus.argh.org> <81u247$kc3$1@hobbes2.crc.com> <821rc5$bim$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <822o4d$ehh$1@birch.prod.itd.earthlink.net> <8233fm$ngf$1@nntp3.atl.mindspring.net> <3845F5DB.4535A4BF@research.canon.com.au> <825g04$qri$1@nntp9.atl.mindspring.net> <1999Dec2.081944.1@eisner> Organization: ? User-Agent: tin/pre-1.4-19990517 ("Psychonaut") (UNIX) (SunOS/4.1.4 (sun4m)) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1999-12-03T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Larry Kilgallen wrote: : But when you do get called into court you merely have to prove there : is prior art, not that the prior art you cite is the exact prior art : you considered when you used the technique. ... As Robert mentioned in another post, in technical areas you have to "prove" in a legal sense, "when" the prior art existed, that what you say is prior art is in fact the the "same" as what is patented (or an obvious extension), etc. The proof requirements for "prior art" and "obviousness" is quite hard to do in software, because software is generally not a well documented field compared to many. One reason so many stupid patents are being granted is that much of the prior art is "documented" only in the source code of old software (often proprietary) that is not accessable to the Patent Office. Steve -- {===--------------------------------------------------------------===} Steve Whalen swhalen@netcom.com {===--------------------------------------------------------------===}