At 1:52 PM -0700 on 10/18/99, Alain Farmer wrote:
>Uli, Anthony, et al:
>
>1. It costs a minimum of US$245 to register a
>trademark in the US, and the trademark must be renewed
>every 5 years. If you want world wide protection, the
>cost increases.
Yes, no reason we can't use a non-registered trademark... what's it called,
common law or something like that?
>Alain: Bottom-line, everyone, is that patent
>protection sucks because it amounts to publicly
>revealing what you want to protect in the first place.
Bottom line is that patents suck; because of them, it is now (technically)
illegal to write even the most insignificant programs. It wouldn't be so
bad if the patent office was not incompetant and patents did not last 20
years -- but they are and do.
Anyone remember Unisys and GIF? That is one of the more reasonable
'software' patents. And remember: IBM has a patent on the same thing -- the
patent office issued two different patents on the same thing...
