[Tfug] Microsoft reportedly wants open source software users to pa y rolyalties

Joe Blais joe.blais at pti-instruments.com
Fri May 18 09:04:46 MST 2007



> -----Original Message-----
> From: tfug-bounces at tfug.org [mailto:tfug-bounces at tfug.org]On Behalf Of
> Ronald Sutherland
> If I'm reading the books correctly a patent must be comprised of at
> least three elements, combined in a previously unknown (or
> unappreciated)  and non-obvious way. The result of the combination must
> be useful. So combing processes would be fine if they are the elements,
> I would count compression, expansion, combustion as processes but I'm
> biased about that. I'm still a little confused but it sounds like a
> chemical itself can't be patented, but the way it is made and how it is
> used can be. Nature can't be patented, which is why a molecule can't
> itself be a patent, but grafting a tree to another can (what is the 3rd
> element?), very interesting stuff.

There's also a thing about being industry specific.  In a company I worked
for before, we made mail rendering machines. They took continuous form
printed pages, cut them and accumulated them into packets, folded them and
inserted them into envelopes and sealed them -- and we all get them as phone
bills!

Anyway, the outsort part of our machine had "bomb bay doors".  A bottom set
of doors that open to drop the envelopes.  You see these in airplanes,
trucks, onion hoppers, wherever, for the last 100 years.  A competator - who
was big into patents - got the concept patented for the mailing industry.
So, after much time developing a machine with these doors, of different
size, different actuators, different materials, whatever.... we had to stop
producing them for sale.  Really expensive loss to us.

I don't know how much is a money thing (attorneys, judges and politicians
aren't cheap) but the reasoning and compresion of  something "obvious"
isn't.

joe






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