dc@caveat.berkeley.edu (Dave Cottingham) (04/26/91)
Archive-name: library/legal/lpf-patents/1991-04-24 Archive: prep.ai.mit.edu:/pub/lpf/patents.texinfo [18.71.0.38] Original-posting-by: dc@caveat.berkeley.edu (Dave Cottingham) Original-subject: Re: Reusing Minix Source Reposted-by: emv@msen.com (Edward Vielmetti, MSEN) In article <1991Apr24.132201.29077@cs.utk.edu> nall@cs.utk.edu (John Nall) writes: >So far as algorithms go, my understanding is that you CAN't patent them. >But of course you can copyright a particular implementation of one. > I wish it were so, but it ain't. The US Patent Office has been issuing software patents like crazy for about five years now. Are they valid? Who knows, but valid or not they should be fairly effective at protecting large immobile software companies from competition from small innovative ones. For more info on this subject, FTP to prep.ai.mit.edu and grab pub/lpf/patents.texinfo. There is a patent treaty in the works which most of the industrialized world is likely to sign. In its current incarnation it includes software among the things that can be patented. So, all you hackers out there, if your country signs this, you'll find the following algorithms protected by patent (they're patented in the US already): LZW compression (used by compress), backing store (used by X-windows), and include files (used by everything). And many more. Maybe you should look into this. Dave Cottingham | "The low-bid contractor is not always dc@caveat.berkeley.edu | the truly socially conscious one." | - Loni Hancock, mayor of Berkeley -- comp.archives file verification prep.ai.mit.edu -rw-r--r-- 1 14910 wheel 33207 Mar 5 14:00 /pub/lpf/patents.texinfo found lpf-patents ok prep.ai.mit.edu:/pub/lpf/patents.texinfo