McKown, John wrote:
recently have the courts started getting after frivolous software patents. Imagine, if you will, what would have happened if software patents had been around in the MVT days. The only scheduling package would likely be CA-7. The only tape management package would be CA-1. And, if properly written, the patent for those would be so broad as to have exclude similar functionality on non-MVT/MVS systems!
AFAIK the first software patent was granted to Martin Goetz of Applied Data Research, Inc. (ADR) in the sixties, for a sort (I don't know whether anyone ever licensed it). So patents were around in MVT days (and perhaps earlier; I don't recall whether this was for the sort Mike Guzik wrote for Stretch).
Gerhard Postpischil Bradford, VT ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
