Thank you to everyone for sending me literally hundreds of examples! It is great to have so many, because I think I can ask the lawyers to pick those that will be most compelling to people who know nothing about CS (like a judge and a jury). I think I have enough now, so save your typing effort unless your example was particularly widely used (or your company has already been sued:).
I am still plowing through them all (hence slow response to questions/email), and will probably not finish until after my summer vacation, which is just about to start.
Again, many thanks and I really appreciate the time that so many people took to tell me about examples. I hope that when the case is settled, I can write back and tell you the whole story.
If you know of an appropriate application, but don't know enough about this case to commit to disclosure, and have questions that I'm not allowed to answer (is the case really important to my employer? who is suing whom? is this person really who she says she is? etc.) then I can ask the lawyers to call you. I would think that it would be in the lawyers' best interest to answer your questions if doing so would give them another compelling example of prior art, especially if your example was in wide use.
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I am still plowing through them all (hence slow response to questions/email), and will probably not finish until after my summer vacation, which is just about to start.
Again, many thanks and I really appreciate the time that so many people took to tell me about examples. I hope that when the case is settled, I can write back and tell you the whole story.
--Marianne Winslett
--Marianne Winslett