-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 En/La Graham Lauder ha escrit, a 30/05/05 13:57: | Approved! Unbelievable! | | | http://www.builderau.com.au/program/work/0,39024650,39190121,00.htm | | 8-( | | I got involved with patents and patent lawyers in the mid-90's. I was doing academic research and funding was starting to dry up in the UK. Our project was rated "alpha" (worthy of funding) but there were insufficient funds to finance it. One of the finance officers at our university put me on to a venture capitalist who liked financing hi-tech cutting edge result with interesting applications. I happened to be doing theoretical work with strong implications for ASR (automatic speech recognition). Anyway, we got together and the first thing he wanted was "strong patent protection" so off we went to the law firm that handled MIT's IP cases. As a result I learned that, everyone strives to make there patents as broad as possible leaving as little room as possible for anyone to follow you up. Second, that everything I ever published was in the PD and thus not patentable so I was to stop publishing and not discuss my work (from then on) with anyone who hadn't signed a non-disclosure agreement. What a bore! Anyway this confirms the observations of many who have commented so far. What I don't understand is that surely there is published work on XML along with conversions issues, isn't there? If so, then none of that stuff can be patent "protected". A less is, if you're working on stuff that you want to share with the world, publish publish publish. There more you publish the harder life is for patent attorneys. cheers, Jonathan -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (GNU/Linux)
iD8DBQFCm1yM64+f0AXUe+4RAq0IAKCW/SQqzhrJesL1N0UDgMmItpAKpQCgojHL 9/uYoI16nhWOmWfTwEW8NiM= =zNL5 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
