2009/3/16 Robert (Jamie) Munro <rjmu...@arjam.net>: > Martin Koppenhoefer wrote: >>> AFAICR, because someone (NavTeq?) has a patent on the idea. >>> >> >> idea? > > Yes. Patents are the right to exclude others from doing something that > was your idea. > > I think you need to read up on how patents work.
I know how patents work > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent > >> I'm gonna try to put a patent on breathing, wonder if someone else had >> the idea before, otherwise I will collect lots of fees in the future >> (in the beginning I consider of giving away the idea of breathing for >> free, lets say for a 2 years trial period). > > Unfortunately, in that case, the patent office will throw it out as > people (even people who work in patent offices) have heard about > breathing before you have submitted the patent. But they hadn't heard of > bezier curves at the time the patent we are worried about was made. is it enough that someone "has heard of" ? Then the curves-patent is obsolete as well. Curves have been used in CAD-Representation (and 3D-Modelling) long before this patent. > I think this might be the patent: > http://www.freepatentsonline.com/EP0919788.html > > Robert (Jamie) Munro well Bezier-Curves date back to the 1960ies, that is before any kind of electronic geodata was used. It still seems strange to me that they got this patent as it is too generic, but maybe that's how it is. Why didn't they just put a patent on all kind of electronic representation, that is, using curves AND linear connections? Maybe there is one also for linear connections and we don't know? What is the exact text of the curves-one? Maybe we could use other curves? Martin _______________________________________________ dev mailing list dev@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/dev
