Re: Shared Generic Instance Code

[jsa@alexandria (Jon S Anthony)]

In article <E80ry3.Epv@world.std.com> bobduff@world.std.com (Robert A Duff) writes:

> In article <dewar.859987468@merv>, Robert Dewar <dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu> wrote:
> >... There is also a problem of patents. DEC holds
> >patents on the implementation of shared generics which make it less worth
> >while to investigate this approach.
> 
> I'm not convinced it's a valid patent.  There was a paper written by
> Gary Bray at Intermetrics, which outlines essentially the same approach,
> and, I believe, predates the DEC work by several years.

I'm not Mr. Patent Lawyer, but I've had to look into this kind of
stuff over the last few months.  My understanding is that unless
Intermetrics or Gary Bray took out a patent for their approach (prior
to the DEC filing), the prior "written up" idea is not sufficient to
"invalidate" the patent.  Also, it seems that you can't patent an idea
per se - you have to specify how to produce a complete realization of
it.  But to be honest, this stuff seems really opaque to me...

/Jon
-- 
Jon Anthony
Organon Motives, Inc.
Belmont, MA 02178
617.484.3383
jsa@organon.com