«

>> My guess is Microsoft hopes to discourage Visual Basic knock-offs. Claim
>> 2 clearly seems to restrict the scope to BASIC.

Neal> Doesn't Python (along with probably every other language ever
Neal> invented) display prior art here?

Sure, but maybe there is no such prior art in the BASIC arena.

Skip

Skip Montanaro schrieb:
> >> My guess is Microsoft hopes to discourage Visual Basic knock-offs. Claim
> >> 2 clearly seems to restrict the scope to BASIC.
>
> Neal> Doesn't Python (along with probably every other language ever
> Neal> invented) display prior art here?
>
> Sure, but maybe there is no such prior art in the BASIC arena.

Isnot is semantically equivalent to the inequality operator which is
some hundred years old. I doubt that this can be an approved patent,
even under the liberal patent US laws.

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But it is approved

Peter Maas wrote:
> Skip Montanaro schrieb:
> > >> My guess is Microsoft hopes to discourage Visual Basic
knock-offs. Claim
> > >> 2 clearly seems to restrict the scope to BASIC.
> >
> > Neal> Doesn't Python (along with probably every other language
ever
> > Neal> invented) display prior art here?
> >
> > Sure, but maybe there is no such prior art in the BASIC arena.
>
> Isnot is semantically equivalent to the inequality operator which is
> some hundred years old. I doubt that this can be an approved patent,
> even under the liberal patent US laws.
>
> --
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
> Peter Maas, M+R Infosysteme, D-52070 Aachen, Tel +49-241-93878-0
> E-mail 'cGV0ZXIubWFhc0BtcGx1c3IuZGU=\n'.decode('base64')
> -------------------------------------------------------------------

wrote:

> But it is approved

As I see, it's patent application, so it is not approved yet.

--
Jarek Zgoda
http://jpa.berlios.de/ | http://www.zgodowie.org/

Peter Maas wrote:

> Isnot is semantically equivalent to the inequality operator which is
> some hundred years old. I doubt that this can be an approved patent,
> even under the liberal patent US laws.


Maybe it's not a technically *valid* patent, but that doesn't mean it
can't be approved. The US patent system has become appallingly lazy
about checking for things like prior art and obviousness. (After all,
we're talking about the system that approved a patent on "one-click
purchasing"....)

The sad thing about this is that these patents can be challenged in
courts... but only if you can afford the legal budget necessary. And
big corporations can afford to defend these patents, regardless of their
legal viability, well enough to prevent all but the most determined (and
well-heeled) challengers from actually getting a judgement on the actual
merits of the case.

Jeff Shannon
Technician/Programmer
Credit International

Jeff Shannon <> writes:

> The sad thing about this is that these patents can be challenged in
> courts... but only if you can afford the legal budget necessary. And
> big corporations can afford to defend these patents, regardless of
> their legal viability, well enough to prevent all but the most
> determined (and well-heeled) challengers from actually getting a
> judgement on the actual merits of the case.

Right. In the late 80s, there was a company whose sole source of
income was from suing smaller companies about violation of their
patent on xoring the cursor onto the screen

<mike
--
Mike Meyer <> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.

Jeff Shannon wrote:
> Peter Maas wrote:
>
>> Isnot is semantically equivalent to the inequality operator which is
>> some hundred years old. I doubt that this can be an approved patent,
>> even under the liberal patent US laws.
>
> Maybe it's not a technically *valid* patent, but that doesn't mean it
> can't be approved. The US patent system has become appallingly lazy
> about checking for things like prior art and obviousness. (After all,
> we're talking about the system that approved a patent on "one-click
> purchasing"....)

IIRC, a few years ago there was an Australian lawyer who wanted to show
the ineffectiveness of the patent application procedure in Australia,
and so he filed a patent application for the invention of some sort of
rotating device (the type that is more commonly known as "a wheel").
The application was approved.

Jan

Peter Maas wrote:

> Isnot is semantically equivalent to the inequality operator which is
> some hundred years old.


Actually, looking at the patent claim, this is *not* semantically
equivalent to inequality. It specifically mentions 'isNot' as something
that compares memory addresses, which in Basic are normally hidden. In
other words, they are referring to something with the same semantics as
Python's 'is not', comparing object identity rather than object equality.

>>> [] is not []
1
>>> [] != []
0
>>>

It's still a pretty questionable patent, though. Even without anyone
explicitly having used 'is not' in Basic before, its prevalence in so
many other languages would seem to fail the "nonobvious" test
(supposedly) required for patent validity.

Jeff Shannon
Technician/Programmer
Credit International

Jeff Shannon schrieb:
> Peter Maas wrote:
>> Isnot is semantically equivalent to the inequality operator which is
>> some hundred years old.
[...]
> Actually, looking at the patent claim, this is *not* semantically
> equivalent to inequality. It specifically mentions 'isNot' as something
> that compares memory addresses, which in Basic are normally hidden.

Isnot is the inequality operator applied to memory addresses. That these
are hidden in VB, doesn't make this a new invention worth to be protected.
E.g. electrical power supplies are a pretty old thing. If somebody would
try to get a patent on the application of electrical power supplies to
TVs this would probably (hope so) rejected and so should the application
of the inequality operator to memory addresses.

> It's still a pretty questionable patent, though. Even without anyone
> explicitly having used 'is not' in Basic before, its prevalence in so
> many other languages would seem to fail the "nonobvious" test
> (supposedly) required for patent validity.

Could this patent be circumvented by writing "not (a is b)" instead
of "a is not b"? If that would be the case the patent claim would
be even more ridiculous.

--
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Maas, M+R Infosysteme, D-52070 Aachen, Tel +49-241-93878-0
E-mail 'cGV0ZXIubWFhc0BtcGx1c3IuZGU=\n'.decode('base64')
-------------------------------------------------------------------

On Sat, 20 Nov 2004 22:20:28 +0100, Peter Maas <> wrote:
> Could this patent be circumvented by writing "not (a is b)" instead
> of "a is not b"? If that would be the case the patent claim would
> be even more ridiculous.

Going off-topic.

Ridiculous patents are not the exclusive domain of software. A few
years ago someone (I think it was Motorola, but I'm not sure) got a
patent on "Vibracall", or how to make a cell phone vibrate when
receiving calls. They didn't want to license the patent to their
competitors. Nokia circumvented it by putting the vibracall circuits
into the battery pack. So when you bought a Nokia digital phone, you
have to buy a "vibracall enabled battery". It was that weird.

--
Carlos Ribeiro
Consultoria em Projetos
blog: http://rascunhosrotos.blogspot.com
blog: http://pythonnotes.blogspot.com
mail:
mail: