From: norm@netcom.com (Norman Hardy)
Date: Wed, 11 Aug 93 13:07:22 PDT
To: spi@iti.org
Subject: Re: Software Patent Institute
Message-ID: <9308112006.AA10806@netcom2.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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I am interested in the issue of patenting ideas that have
already been put into practice or that would be obvious
to any of many practitioners. I have a patent and my
patent attorney included in the ideas that were not
new. We were not motivated to spend the time and money
to revise the patent to avoid this. The patent examiner
had little experience in programming and missed the
old ideas.
 
I would be curious to know what software patents exist
and the outcome of any court fights to overturn patents
on ideas that were indeed not new.
 
I am not good a keeping track of publications where I
have learned of ideas but I often do know people who were
using various ideas going back to 1955 when I began
programming professionally.
 
I do not know very much about patent law but I understand that
IBM, for instance, regularly publishes "Technical Disclosures"
which is mostly comprised of the work products of IBM patent attorneys
when they have decided that it is not worth the expense of
patenting some particular idea.
 
It would be good to have a public repository of programming ideas
that are good but not worth patenting.
 
Let me know how I can help.