software patents

[Lloyd Budd]

On 22-May-04, at 13:46, Lennart Sorensen wrote:

> (although how they both got the patent, who knows).
Does that really surprise you given the current system .

> Besides if you patent it first, then it is probably easier to defend
> against others than if they patent something that you have already done
> (then you have to deal with showing all the prior art and that.)
Without published source code yes , but otherwise I would not think so ,
particularly considering I have heard that most patents are convoluted
such that it is can be difficult to identify when two are patenting the
exact same thing .

Maybe , I am just jealous of IBM's patent on paying software developers
<http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1462778,00.asp> ;-)

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