Theoretically I suppose you could patent OLE 2 Compound document format...
"Bad way to aggregate objects into a mock filesystem inside of a file"
Glad its old news!
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
The link is to information that is a little old (June 2000). Is there a more recent update that is disturbing you? Did this particular example ever go anywhere? Patenting file formats might be disturbing, and I'm not an expert, but I don't see how it would stop someone from reverse engineering a "reader" or a "writer" of that format. Wouldn't it just mean that one wouldn't be able to create a file format that is the same? I guess it depends on how the patent is written, I suppose.
-Mark
-----Original Message----- From: Andrew C. Oliver [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, March 14, 2003 4:57 PM To: POI Developers List; Jakarta General List Subject: fair notice
I appologize to those of us who get this 2 times...
This could later affect POI (http://jakarta.apache.org/poi), but does not currently: http://www.advogato.org/article/101.html Granted POI would be in "good company" with a wide berth of software and there would likely be a retributative effect that might backfire on Microsoft.
I'll keep this brief, but the patenting of file formats could be a disturbing trend. I'll certainly keep an eye on this.
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