Tim Bray wrote:
>
> At 04:55 PM 11/28/99 +0100, Stefano Mazzocchi wrote:
> >Wong Kok Wai wrote:
> >
> >> Microsoft has a patent for CSS.
> >
> >It does not, since this cannot possibly being done
>
> Microsoft has a patent on the basic concept of rendering tagged text
> using stylesheets. It was idiotically issued at least two decades after
> this was first done by someone else. It was apparently issued to a bunch
> of engineers working on the now-deceased "blackbird" technology that
> was supposed, in 1994, to replace the Web. The guys in the internet end
> of MS claim they had no idea and I mostly believe them. The US patent
> system is at this moment quite deeply diseased in the area of software.
>
> E.g. Yahoo has a patent on the idea of publishing web pages by filling
> templates out from an in-memory database. No, I'm not kidding.
>
> >You cannot patent an API. As you could not even patent the idea of
> >having "stream of structured events" as parser output.
> >
> >Your fear of someone patenting an XML API is totally irrational.
>
> Your comment is 100% wrong, but at the same time reasonable. In
> fact, it is generally recognized that the current state of the art
> in US software patents is, to quote you, "totally irrational".
>
> Since the world is full of irrational manifestations, it is probably
> in general better to check facts before pronouncing them impossible. -T.
Wiser. Wise words that show how much I have to learn.
Sometimes, it just feels good to be european :)
--
Stefano Mazzocchi One must still have chaos in oneself to be
able to give birth to a dancing star.
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Friedrich Nietzsche
