The problem with re: Bilksi is that all the patents that are being rejected this way should have been rejected because they are "obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art". Bilksi is a copout by the courts that couldn't be bothered to do the right thing by invalidating for obviousness.
The boundary between hardware, software, and processes is not clean cut, and makes a poor basis for rejecting patents.
Namiki was not purchased by Pilot. Pilot is the US subsidiary of the Namiki (Japan) brand.
The old Namiki pens are lighter, and were a little cheaper. Sometimes you can still find one for about $70-$80. The new Pilot version is heavier. Some like that, some don't. I have both and prefer the Pilot.
I think that the Pilot vanishing point pen, at about $100, is probably the best fountain pen you can get at any price.
I prefer Waterman ink. Waterman ink never clogs up. I have heard that the Pilot/Namiki ink is very good, however.
Here, from the wayback machine, is a note about how I used to maintain web pages using CVS.
http://web.archive.org/web/19971222105157/ee.yal e. edu/www.html
The nice thing about the wayback machine is that it gives you a date for that prior art (In this case December 1997, which preceeds the Feb 1998 filing date on the provisional applicatoin.)
I read the patent claims, but not the whole thing. It looks like they are claiming a system in which you can send data over a network. The "new" thing seems to be that when the data arrives it goes directly to the application's buffer (instead of going through a kernel buffer for example.)
I suspect that this patent will be invalid. There are many prior systems which sent data directly to the destination buffer. (iWarp from CMU + intel. Active Messages from Berkeley running on a Connection Machine CM-5. The VI archictecture from giganet/emulex. There are probably others...)
The important part of the ruling is as follows. The judge ruled that the the computer which stores the hyperlinked data must be a *central* computer. Specifically the central computer must be in one place. This could be very unhelpful to BT's case, since on the internet the data is stored in a distributed fashion.
The issue about RAM vs. disk may play an important role also. This is probably also unhelpful from BT's perspective
The ruling isn't really that long. Much of it is boilerplate text explaining how the law works in a case like this. All Markman rulings seem to be 75 percent the same.
Your proposed C function does not implement addn.
As you point out yourself, you cannot store the result of addn(2) and expect it to work later (for example, if you called addn(3), the stored version of addn(2) would become addn(3).
You then propose to make up a closure in C by using a struct. For example,
struct addn_closure {
int (*f)(int x, int y);
int x;
};
Then instead of doing
(addn(2))(3)
you would have to do
struct addn_closure *f = addn(2);
f->f(f->y, 3);
This is nothing like doing
int (*f)(int) = addn(2);
f(3);
It doesn't count as a function unless you can call it like a function.
You cannot write the function addn() in C so that it is
- reasonably free of side effects, and
- works using normal C function calling.
Note: gcc provides a downward function passing facility that lets you do something like this (using "trampolines") That is not standard C, and it doesn't let you write a function that returns a function.
To be fair, old versions of lisp couldn't do this very well either. It wasn't until around 1977 that lisps with lexical closures started appearing. Of course it wasn't until about 1985 that optimizing C compilers started producing correct code:-)
Looking at the mplayer web site, it appears that mplayer *is* released under GPL.
There are a few files that are not GPL'd in the mplayer software, however. To compile and use mplayer you need the non-GPL'd stuff linked in. But you can do anything you want with the GPL'd stuff.
I looked at the licensing discussion on the mplayer web site. It really is GPL, as far as I can tell.
There are some files in the distribution which are not GPL, however.
Implication: You can redistribute the sources, but you cannot redistribute the binaries that use the non-GPL'd pieces. If you make a binary that uses only the GPL'd pieces, then you can redistribute that.
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Nonetheless, I feel that the Bilski decision is wrong. The court shouldn't have created a new reason to kill patents when the old reasons were better.
If someone ever came up with a nonobvious and useful business method patent, I would have supported its patentability.
The patent office is doing the right thing. Bilski gives a reason to kill the patent. But the courts should have killed it based on obviousness.
The problem with re: Bilksi is that all the patents that are being rejected this way should have been rejected because they are "obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art". Bilksi is a copout by the courts that couldn't be bothered to do the right thing by invalidating for obviousness.
The boundary between hardware, software, and processes is not clean cut, and makes a poor basis for rejecting patents.
Was it a cheap fountain pen? Most cheap fountain pens are worse than the same-priced gel pens.
Waterman makes a decent pen for under $100.
The best choice is a Namiki/Pilot Vanishing Point, also about $100.
No need to go over $100, however.
Namiki was not purchased by Pilot. Pilot is the US subsidiary of the Namiki (Japan) brand.
The old Namiki pens are lighter, and were a little cheaper. Sometimes you can still find one for about $70-$80.
The new Pilot version is heavier. Some like that, some don't. I have both and prefer the Pilot.
I think that the Pilot vanishing point pen, at about $100, is probably the best fountain pen you can get at any price.
I prefer Waterman ink. Waterman ink never clogs up. I have heard that the Pilot/Namiki ink is very good, however.
Here, from the wayback machine, is a note about how I used to maintain web pages using CVS.
l e. edu/www.html
http://web.archive.org/web/19971222105157/ee.ya
The nice thing about the wayback machine is that it gives you a date for that prior art (In this case December 1997, which preceeds the Feb 1998 filing date on the provisional applicatoin.)
I read the patent claims, but not the whole thing. It looks like they are claiming a system in which you can send data over a network. The "new" thing seems to be that when the data arrives it goes directly to the application's buffer (instead of going through a kernel buffer for example.)
I suspect that this patent will be invalid. There are many prior systems which sent data directly to the destination buffer. (iWarp from CMU + intel. Active Messages from Berkeley running on a Connection Machine CM-5. The VI archictecture from giganet/emulex. There are probably others...)
The important part of the ruling is as follows. The judge ruled that the the computer which stores the hyperlinked data must be a *central* computer. Specifically the central computer must be in one place. This could be very unhelpful to BT's case, since on the internet the data is stored in a distributed fashion.
The issue about RAM vs. disk may play an important role also. This is probably also unhelpful from BT's perspective
The ruling isn't really that long. Much of it is boilerplate text explaining how the law works in a case like this. All Markman rulings seem to be 75 percent the same.
Your proposed C function does not implement addn.
:-)
As you point out yourself, you cannot store the result of addn(2) and expect it to work later (for example, if you called addn(3), the stored version of addn(2) would become addn(3).
You then propose to make up a closure in C by using a struct. For example,
struct addn_closure {
int (*f)(int x, int y);
int x;
};
Then instead of doing
(addn(2))(3)
you would have to do
struct addn_closure *f = addn(2);
f->f(f->y, 3);
This is nothing like doing
int (*f)(int) = addn(2);
f(3);
It doesn't count as a function unless you can call it like a function.
You cannot write the function addn() in C so that it is
- reasonably free of side effects, and
- works using normal C function calling.
Note: gcc provides a downward function passing facility that lets you do something like this (using "trampolines") That is not standard C, and it doesn't let you write a function that returns a function.
To be fair, old versions of lisp couldn't do this very well either. It wasn't until around 1977 that lisps with lexical closures started appearing. Of course it wasn't until about 1985 that optimizing C compilers started producing correct code
Isn't OS/360 still around from the 1960s?
Also, there may be many FORTRAN codes written then that are still in production.
Looking at the mplayer web site, it appears that mplayer *is* released under GPL.
There are a few files that are not GPL'd in the mplayer software, however. To compile and use mplayer you need the non-GPL'd stuff linked in. But you can do anything you want with the GPL'd stuff.
My reading of the GPL is that this is allowed.
I looked at the licensing discussion on the mplayer web site. It really is GPL, as far as I can tell.
There are some files in the distribution which are not GPL, however.
Implication: You can redistribute the sources, but you cannot redistribute the binaries that use the non-GPL'd pieces. If you make a binary that uses only the GPL'd pieces, then you can redistribute that.
All of this is allowed by the GPL.