Subject: [TS] Re: Patent issed for The Brain
From: Ben Darnell (bgdarnel@unity.ncsu.edu)
Date: Fri Mar 10 2000 - 23:27:49 EST
On Fri, Mar 10, 2000 at 07:49:00PM -0800, Michael Simcich wrote:
> I know this was mentioned here a while ago, but apparently it's now
> official. The Brain (www.thebrain.com) by Natrificial has a patent
> approved for their brain technology that "allows any piece of
> information to be linked and accessed from multiple locations within
> the interface – giving users the ability to retrieve and navigate data
> by association".
>
Actually, it's worse than that. Searching for "Natrificial" at
www.patents.ibm.com turns up 4 hits. Their first US patent was just
issued, but there are several international patents (or are those just
applications?). I have read the first international patent, but not the
rest (I didn't know about them until I did this search). It is my
opinion that all common aspects shared by ThoughtStream and the Brain do
not meet the patent criteria of non-obviousness and novelty. If there
are any lawyerly types out there who can help me interpret these
patents, I would definitely appreciate the help. (is Nate still here?)
> I use the Brain, I like it a lot. I really, really, don't want
> Natrificial to own a patent that will ultimately prevent similiar
> dynamic linking interfaces from being developed. If that's what the
> patent is going to amount to it has the potential to impact the
> development of computer interfaces in a very negative way, far
> exceeding the damages that might be caused by the types of ecommerce
> related patents that Amazon has been awarded (which are also a real
> bummer).
I agree. It seems to me that by sponsoring Minciu Sodas's effort to
create an import/export standard, Natrificial is effectively encouraging
the development of similar programs. (unless they're planning to wait
for a standard to get established and then start enforcing their
patents, like Unisys did).
-Ben
-- Ben Darnell bgdarnel@unity.ncsu.edu http://thoughtstream.org Finger bgdarnel@debian.org for PGP/GPG key 1024D/1F06E509------------------------------------------------------------------------ @Backup- Protect and Access your data any time, any where on the net. Try @Backup FREE and recieve 300 points from mypoints.com Install now: http://click.egroups.com/1/2345/3/_/6321/_/952748873/
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