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: 103376,37680a99b5e22b2b X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: jsa@alexandria (Jon S Anthony) Subject: Re: Shared Generic Instance Code Date: 1997/04/02 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 230214607 Distribution: world References: <5hrkhkINN9ip@snoopy.cis.ohio-state.edu> Organization: PSI Public Usenet Link Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1997-04-02T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article bobduff@world.std.com (Robert A Duff) writes: > In article , Robert Dewar 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