[wellylug] new MS software patent application

[Jethro Carr]

okay,

this is the most stupid thing I ever saw...

It'll never get approved. It's been in use in all programming language
since the start of computers.

Only Microsoft would try something like this...

Imagine trying to enforce it if it got approved :-) 



On Sun, 2004-11-21 at 09:46, Brent Wood wrote:
> This patent application by Microsoft is perhaps the biggest threat to the
> software industry to date.
> 
> I don't know of a single useful program )outside of the ubiquitous "hello
> world" variants) which doesn't have some sort of conditional which is likely to
> use this.
> 
> In this patent application, M$ are trying to own the IsNot operator. Although
> the William Gates approach lends itself to an I_Snot takeoff :-)
> 
> http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%2220040230959%22.PGNR.&OS=DN/20040230959&RS=DN/20040230959
> 
> Like the recent FAT patent, it is likely that MS would use this for income
> rather than litigation purposes (charging digital camera, cellphone & memory
> stick manufacturors 25c per device for the use of the FAT filesystem for
> data/image storage is not a crippling cost, but is still revenue for MS.
> 
> 
> Brent Wood
-- 
-- Jethro

dodocaptain at paradise.net.nz

http://www.jedolinux.com
http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/jethroc
http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/jethroc/cv.html

http://www.wellylug.org.nz