It may yet decide the Spanish election later this year, and the anti-war sentiment of the populace of Mexico, Chile and Turkey appears to have affected their governments' votes on the Security Council or their cooperation with American military plans.
Not long ago a new phrase for this sort of thing was "People Power". For a long time we've been calling it "democracy". Now we've had millions demonstrating together worldwide. It's fun to have a global consensus.
"hyperlinks which 'would be selected by the operation of a selected key of the keyboard.'.So by my understanding you're OK if you use a mouse." No, the Patent Office has the "Doctrine of Equivalents" which tries to bring a little common sense to interpreting patent claims. The (left) mouse button is effectively equivalent to a "selected key" (and many, if not all, web browsers make an equivalent key available) so this doesn't distinguish actual usage from the language of the claim.
There is a rule, called the doctrine of laches, but there doesn't seem to be a hard-and-fast time limit. Presumably they are aware of the Web, Help files and the rest, but perhaps they could claim that they'd forgotten about the patent. It's a lame argument, but perhaps their attorneys would be willing to advance it.
The question "why now?" is a good one; a better one is simply "why do this at all?"
No. Prior art is anything described in sufficient detail to know what was meant. In practice, however, the Patent Office tends only to consider prior patents as prior art, unless the applicant brings other material to its attention, with the result that most of the history of computer science escapes their notice.
Note that none of Nelson's publications appears in the references to the patent.
I don't see how Nelson could have described hypertext without mentioning the basic mechanism that makes it work, so presumably the BT patent either doesn't cover hyperlinking as such or isn't valid, at least in part.
In any event, the patent expires in 60 days, so who cares? Let them go after Microsoft and AOL. It should be fun to watch, anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
It may yet decide the Spanish election later this year, and the anti-war sentiment of the populace of Mexico, Chile and Turkey appears to have affected their governments' votes on the Security Council or their cooperation with American military plans.
Not long ago a new phrase for this sort of thing was "People Power". For a long time we've been calling it "democracy". Now we've had millions demonstrating together worldwide. It's fun to have a global consensus.
I like .exe, but I like .corn better as a trap for
people with proportional fonts and bad eyesight.
"hyperlinks which 'would be selected by the operation of a selected key of the keyboard.'.So by my understanding you're OK if you use a mouse." No, the Patent Office has the "Doctrine of Equivalents" which tries to bring a little common sense to interpreting patent claims. The (left) mouse button is effectively equivalent to a "selected key" (and many, if not all, web browsers make an equivalent key available) so this doesn't distinguish actual usage from the language of the claim.
There is a rule, called the doctrine of laches, but there doesn't seem to be a hard-and-fast time limit. Presumably they are aware of the Web, Help files and the rest, but perhaps they could claim that they'd forgotten about the patent. It's a lame argument, but perhaps their attorneys would be willing to advance it.
The question "why now?" is a good one; a better one is simply "why do this at all?"
No. Prior art is anything described in sufficient detail to know what was meant. In practice, however, the Patent Office tends only to consider prior patents as prior art, unless the applicant brings other material to its attention, with the result that most of the history of computer science escapes their notice.
Note that none of Nelson's publications appears in the references to the patent.
I don't see how Nelson could have described hypertext without mentioning the basic mechanism that makes it work, so presumably the BT patent either doesn't cover hyperlinking as such or isn't valid, at least in part.
In any event, the patent expires in 60 days, so who cares? Let them go after Microsoft and AOL. It should be fun to watch, anyway.