Oops, I meant to say "the idiots over in the U.S. Patent Office" - not Sun's patent office....
:-) Rob -----Original Message----- From: Robert Finneran [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, January 21, 2002 12:17 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: axkit and patents (fwd) Hello, I think the tech community needs to take a stand against this kind of outrageous behavior. I cannot believe that Sun does not understand that this patent application is just plain wrong. I don't even have to explain why this is wrong, just read the text of it. The worse part is that those idiots over in the patent office are likely to approve the patent. Making patent mistakes helps evolve patent law. The trouble is, challenging a patent usually costs millions of dollars. It's a game only rich companies can play. Someday I hope that software engineers wake up to the threat of their freedom. Soon the only protection you will have against this sort of abuse of the free market system is to only work for major corporations who can afford to play in this arena. They cross-license each other's patents to create oligopolies that can "legally" restrain free trade. Independent software companies without vast patent portfolios of their own will not have anything to trade in settlement negotiations. Is this simply a paranoid view of our trade? I think not. Look at the evidence. Rob -----Original Message----- From: Matt Sergeant [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, January 21, 2002 11:50 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: axkit and patents (fwd) Looks like Sun are trying to Patent what AxKit and Cocoon can do. We need to make sure the patent office knows of the prior art on this. Do we have people who do that sort of thing? -- <!-- Matt --> <:->Get a smart net</:-> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2002 19:39:30 +0000 From: Sebastian Rahtz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: axkit and patents have y'all seen this arrant nonsense from Sun? http://l2.espacenet.com/dips/viewer?PN=WO0163481&CY=ep&LG=en&DB=EPD describes a patent application which is a trivial AxKit operation..... -- Sebastian Rahtz OUCS Information Manager 13 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6NN. Phone +44 1865 283431 --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------- In case of troubles, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------- In case of troubles, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------- In case of troubles, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]