[OT] Re: Geoworks and their patent

[David Megginson]

terje at in-progress.com (Terje Norderhaug) writes:

> Problem is that here in the US the politicans are in the pocket of
> major corporations. Some of the players in the tech industry might
> appreciate being able to file patents for trivial ideas. Perhaps a
> potential strategy is to not let those filing trivial patents get
> away with it.

I remember that a long time ago Apple tried to enforce a patent on
overlapping windows against Digital (GEM) and then Microsoft
(Windows), much to the amusement of Xerox, I'd imagine.  More
recently, a few of the more prominent Web companies (like Amazon) have
squandered some of their expensively-bought goodwill by trying to play
the software-patent game.

In general, though, are there any recent examples of the big tech
companies (i.e. Microsoft, IBM, Sun, etc.) trying to enforce a
software patent?  I've always thought of software patents as a
little-person thing, like spurious law suits or domain-name squatting
-- in other words, something the the major U.S. corporations would
like to see disappear.


All the best,


David

-- 
David Megginson                 david at megginson.com
           http://www.megginson.com/

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