[OT] Re: Geoworks and their patent

[Len Bullard]

Lee Anne Phillips wrote:
> 
> Having too many patents laying about is like hardening
> of the arteries; it will kill you sooner or later.

Or maybe it takes the vision to choose well.  Unisys owned 
IDE/AS in 1991.  It was a well-formed SGML browser using 
stylesheets, hyperlinks, Windows, scripts, even ran as a 
network app on the Novell network.  EBT had a similar 
system using the scrolling technique.  Had either of these 
groups taken out patents on their *innovations* some measure 
of that bubble might be in other hands and a certain english 
network engineer might still be working beneath a steam pipe.  
In both cases, they chose wisely while perhaps their management 
did not.  Instead, now their work is prior art and while it 
has not made its builders incredibly wealthy, it protects 
what it could not corral.

Innovation, like Crichton's dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, has a 
way of changing rules, blinding fools, and escaping the island.

Be of good cheer; even fossils can migrate.

len


xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev at ic.ac.uk
Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/ or CD-ROM/ISBN 981-02-3594-1
Unsubscribe by posting to majordom at ic.ac.uk the message
unsubscribe xml-dev  (or)
unsubscribe xml-dev your-subscribed-email at your-subscribed-address

Please note: New list subscriptions now closed in preparation for transfer to OASIS.