Re: Shared Generic Instance Code

[Corey Minyard <minyard@acm.org>]

jsa@alexandria (Jon S Anthony) writes:

> 
> 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...
> 

I'm not Mr. (US) Patent Lawyer either, but from my understanding of
patent law, if something is patented that had previously been
published, the patent is invalid.  In fact, it might even be illegal.
If it was not published or was kept as a trade secret, the patent will
still stand but the company that kept it as a trade secret is exempt.

I wish the US Supreme Court would nuke all these software patents in
the US.  I'm not sure what goes on in other countries.

-- 
Corey Minyard               Internet:  minyard@acm.org
  Work: minyard@nortel.ca       UUCP:  minyard@wf-rch.cirr.com