Subject: [TS] Re: Patent issed for The Brain
From: Michael Simcich (msimcich@accesstools.com)
Date: Sat Mar 11 2000 - 23:36:22 EST
The more I think about this Brain patent the more worried I get.
I've read what was posted by Ben to Slashdot back in Oct or whatever, and
one thing I noticed is that most of the respondents seemed to think that the
patent wouldn't be awarded. Oops. Ben, would you mind posting to slashdot on
this new development? I already submitted an article but it was declined (I
guess the article on the new MS game stations was more important).
I did get an article up at technocrat.net,
http://technocrat.net/952758993/index_html. I've also written to Andreas K,
the Minciu Sodas guy, as he has some kind of relationship with Natrificial.
Also Dave Wiener of Userland (Frontier, Manila, etc), who is also pretty
disgusted with it, and the Jerry's Brain eGroup here (no one has responded
to my post there yet).
I'd say that now is a good time to let people know about this if you're
concerned.
Michael Simcich
AccessTools
-----Original Message-----
From: Ben Darnell [mailto:bgdarnel@unity.ncsu.edu]
Sent: Friday, March 10, 2000 8:28 PM
To: thoughtstream@egroups.com
Subject: [TS] Re: Patent issed for The Brain
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
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