On Wed, 2005-06-01 at 20:12 -0700, Mike White wrote: > Probably, but you would have to challenge it in court to make it stick.
Which is a major problem because the expense of doing that eliminates the majority of SMEs from ever even thinking about it. Even Local Education Authorities with 100 schools wouldn't do it over a famous case here in England because of the expense. Central government had to step in and that is very rare. Since the main competing companies were all small businesses a bogus patent ran for years and cost the schools a lot of money. Software patents are too easily open to this type of abuse. There appears to be an asymmetry in patent offices granting patents yet not having the power to revoke them. Rather than courts deciding, the patent office should have the power to retrospectively review the evidence and then revoke a patent. -- Ian Lynch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ZMSL --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
