At 04:47 PM 1/11/00 -0700, Aaron Blosser wrote:
'Tis true. It doesn't surprise me that many companies are teaming up to
>fight the patent. Windowing was *the* best way to quickly fix all that
>software, and a good number of software vendors used it.
>If I recall right, the guy who owns the patent wasn't asking for much in the
>way of royalties from each company (but amounts to a lot when totalled), but
>I think the fight revolves around whether this guy really invented the idea,
>or whether it's just one of those common sense things that can't be
>patented, or something like that.
This is getting off topic, but:
The criteria for something to be patentable is that the average
practitioner in the field wouldn't think of it. So it boils down to
whether the average programmer would think of windowing, given the problem.
+--------------------------------------------------------+
| Jud McCranie |
| |
| 137*2^197783+1 is prime! (59,541 digits, 11/11/99) |
+--------------------------------------------------------+
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