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De - Pt| English Dictionary: Software patent | by the DICT Development Group |
| 1 result for Software patent | |
| From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (15Feb98) [foldoc]: | |
|
software patent programming technique. There have been several infamous patents for software techniques which most experienced programmers would consider fundamental or trivial, such as the idea of using {exclusive-or} to plot a cursor on a {bitmap display}. The spread of software patents could stifle innovation and make programming much harder because programmers would have to worry about patents when designing or choosing {algorithm}s. There are over ten thousand software patents in the US, and several thousand more are issued each year. Each one may be owned by, or could be bought by, a grasping company whose lawyers carefully plan to attack people at their most vulnerable moments. Of course, they couch the threat as a "reasonable offer" to save you miserable years in court. "Divide and conquer" is the watchword: pursue one group at a time, while advising the rest of us to relax because we are in no danger today. Compuserve developed the {GIF} format for graphical images many years ago, not knowing about {Unisys}'s 1985 patent covering the {LZW} data compression {algorithm} used in GIF. GIF was subsequently adopted widely on the {Internet}. In 1994 Unisys threatened to sue Compuserve, forcing them to impose a sublicensing agreement for GIF on their users. Compuserve users can accept this agreement now, or face Unisys later on their own. The rest of us don't have a choice -- we get to face Unisys when they decide it's our turn. So much trouble from just one software patent. Patents in the UK can't describe {algorithm}s or mathematical methods. See also {LPF}, {software law}. {patent search (http://sunsite.unc.edu/patents/intropat.html)}. (1995-01-06) | |
