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Microsoft's 'IsNot' Patent Continued...
An anonymous reader writes " According to the patent application--filed in mid-November by Paul Vick, lead architect for Visual Basic .Net at Microsoft; Amanda Silver, a program manager on the Visual Basic team; and an individual in Bellevue, Wash., named Costica Barsan--the IsNot operator is described as a single operator that allows a comparison of two variables to determine if the two point to the same location in memory." This article continues the tale started last november, and here is an eWeek story on the same subject.
Let's pretend this patent goes through; could RealSoftware Inc. sue the patent office for failing in it's duty? I mean, there has to be some liability here. If Microsoft can start patenting any crazy thing with their immense resources, and then everyone else has to scramble to get these patents knocked down, something has really gone wrong. Raise the patent fees so the USPO can really examine these patents. Make them liable for costs when a patent gets stricken for being obvious.
It is major companies that are trying to aquire patents to be able to stop small start-ups. Basically, MS is moving into a defensive posture. That makes sense WRT the article that was written earlier about MS starting to decay.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
According to Thomistic philosophy, being and good are equivalent. Therefore, not-being is evil. Therefore Microsoft is attempting to patent evil.
And the Deutsche Telekom has actually sued other companies over the letter T and the color Magenta. They are just as bad as Microsoft.
C - the footgun of programming languages
And that is the suttle truth is it not?
!= is a single operator eventhough it uses two characters.
My guess is this is just the fruits of an internal employee reward patent policy. MS execs probably did not even know about this, and its the engineers going wild. Just a guess.
That's funny because XOR is logically the same as isNot. The output is true when the two inputs are not equal. The Cadtrak patent on XOR is 4,197,590. A company that I worked for got the threatening letter for using this patented technique for graphics displays.
I always thought that a good example of prior art is analog TV sync signals. The H and V sync are XORed because its easy to separate them using another XOR.
"MS is not going to be a company to sue without good reason"
What are you talking about. Both Ballmer and Gates have said publicly that they intend to "defend their intellectual property vigorously". That's CEO speak for we are going to sue. Furthermore according to Perens MS has told HP that they intend sue open source projects for patents and sendmail was mentioned by name.
Finally just google. Ms has sued many people for intellectual property violations. Remember Mike Rowe? If Ms is willing to sue a 16 year old boy you think they are not going to sue for patent infrigement?
evil is as evil does