richard@gryphon.CTS.COM (Richard Sexton) (09/19/87)
Speaking of silly patents...
Somebody (was it Vectrix) has patented XOR crosshair cursors. Now,
dont tell me people were using them them before this patent, I know
that.
They have been asking $10,000 for the "right" to use "their"
cursor.
A partial list of companies that have paid this "fee": IBM, Bell & Howell, etc.
It seems it would cost more to litigate this, than to just pay them off.
Me: "But that isn't fair"
Lawyer: "It doesn't have to be fair son, it has to be legal"
Me: " Right"
--
Richard J. Sexton
INTERNET: richard@gryphon.CTS.COM
UUCP: {hplabs!hp-sdd, sdcsvax, ihnp4, nosc}!crash!gryphon!richard
"It's too dark to put the keys in my ignition..."tim@ism780c.UUCP (Tim Smith) (09/21/87)
richard@gryphon.CTS.COM (Richard Sexton) writes:
< Somebody (was it Vectrix) has patented XOR crosshair cursors. Now,
< dont tell me people were using them them before this patent, I know
< that.
I was told when I was programming video games for the Mattel Intellivision
that Philips had a patent that covered the detection of on screen collisions
of video objects by AND gates.
This was claimed to be the reason that the game that was included with the
Intellivision did not use moving objects ( it was entirely done with
backgound graphics ). The idea was that if Philips decided to sue,
they would not be able to get an injunction banning the sales of the
Intellivision itself, only individual games that they know used that
technology.
--
Tim Smith, Knowledgian {sdcrdcf,uunet}!ism780c!tim
tim@ism780c.isc.com
"Oh I wish I were Matthew Wiener, That is who I truly want to be,
'Cause if I were Matthew Wiener, Tim Maroney would send flames to me"john@hpcvlo.HP.COM (John Eaton) (09/24/87)
<<<< < In a paper distributed by MIT and in Communications of the ACM, the authors < described RSA without any mention of a patent or pending patent. < ---------- It will hurt you to distribute copyrighted material without the notice but not patents. The "patent pending" stamp seen on many products is a legal non-requirement and really only put there to bluff the competition. John Eaton !hplabs!hp-pcd!john