Your intent is good, but since it takes a few million dollars to overturn
a dud patent yet only a few thousand to apply for one, it's possible that
just shooting down bad patents may not be a viable long term strategy. ;)
However, shooting down this one specifically, might be a way to garner
more press for OOo if it's done right.
-Lars
Lars Nooden ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Software patents harm all Net-based business, write your MEP:
http://wwwdb.europarl.eu.int/ep6/owa/p_meps2.repartition?ilg=EN
On Thu, 2 Jun 2005, Alex wrote:
I know most of you will think this idea is lame and far fetched and I'm just
a wishful thinker.
Would it be possible that we, as a group with all our collective backgrounds
in software development, could actually gather enough irrefutable evidence so
that it might be presented to a judge to prove this patent is bogus and
should not have been issued?
Alright! I'll just bend over and you guys can kick. Go ahead ... ;-)
Alex Janssen
Lars D. Nood�n wrote:
One problem is the junk patent which is far too vague and covers obvious
developments and covers prior art. Two perl modules come to mind right off
"Storeable" and "Data::Dumper";, I'm sure there are other serialization
modules in C libraries or even Pascal if one wants examples going back to
the 80's or late 70's.
The other is the general problem of sw patents. Which cost millions to
over turn. There was a conference on the topic in Brussels last year in
November and the lawyers there indicated that based on actual costs, it
runs about $4 million to throw out a bad patent. So what it alsmost comes
down to is a contest of which team has more money.
SW Patents are a threat to *all* small and medium businesses. SMB is
anything with < 1 billion per year -- so that means pretty much all
European business. And most of those don't have a spare $4 million every
quarter to throw out the bad patents.
A third problem is that MS is putting on a huge marketing / mindshare
campaign right now and is doing everything possible to distract or confuse
the public in regards to OpenOffice and OpenDocument.
-Lars
Lars Nooden ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Software patents harm all Net-based business, write your MEP:
http://wwwdb.europarl.eu.int/ep6/owa/p_meps2.repartition?ilg=EN
On Wed, 1 Jun 2005, Alex wrote:
Now having re-read the proper patent. I still don't see how they could be
awarded a patent on what appears to be nothing more that converting a data
structure defined in one file to a serial stream in another file. Sounds
like storing a record in a database to me. :-\ I think Borland was doing
this back in the early 90s in BP7, storing object instances on a data
stream. I'll have to check on that. But it seems so overly simple. Like
someone getting a patent on how you dump cerial into a bowl in the morning
changing its format and then back into the box when you change your mind.
You've done it thousands of times and now someone comes along and gets a
patent on it. Wouldn't this procedure be considered in the public domain?
Alex Janssen
Sander Vesik wrote:
So please englighten us, what about the patent is all that old?
you seemto be seeing just soe fragments and not teh whole - recognising
well-known
tree species but not that you have wondered up to a forest you havne't
seen before
;-)
Its not that teh patent is something incredibly novel or innovative or
that parts of
it (or possibly all) probably won't be upheld in court or that there
definitely
won't be prior art - its just that it is not (as far as software patents
go in this
regard) somehow entirely bogus or preposterous or would cover all (or
even a
fraction of) computer-computer communication as people have been
claiming.
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