On Tue, 30 October 2001, Russell Nelson wrote:

> Essentially, we are all of us completely and totally screwed by the
> patent system.  If I invent something that you have put into your
> (unpublished -- at least as far as the patent system is concerned)
> code for decades, and patent it, I 0WN J00.  Doesn't matter if you're
> IBM and I'm Joe Blow, or vice-versa even.


given:

http://www.nolo.com/encyclopedia/faqs/pts/pct3.html#FAQ-294

=Patents must be novel (that is, it must be different from all 
=previous inventions in some important way).
=
=Patents must be nonobvious (a surprising and significant development) 
=to somebody who understands the technical field of the invention.

I don't see how you could patent something that I've had in
code for decades. It's neither nonobvious nor novel.

Granted, software patents can be a pain
(Some perl/tk widgets had to have functionality
ripped out because they supported a patented image format)

and, IMHO, stupid (the "one-click" patent from days gone by)

but has the scenario you described actually happened?
(i.e. decades old code getting patented out from under someone)

Greg



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