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Someone on MemeStreams MUST have something like this:
by Decius at 10:41 pm EDT, May 15, 2007 |
A company called Acacia has claimed a patent on an “information distribution system” that amounts to the idea of shipping a CD-ROM that contains hyperlinks to online resources. (EFF is currently working on busting another Acacia patent that covers streaming audio and video over the Internet.) To help bust this overly broad patent, we are looking for prior art that shows the use of this technology before 1994.
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RE: Someone on MemeStreams MUST have something like this:
by skullaria at 6:26 am EDT, May 16, 2007 |
Before 1994 is the hard part. Isn't that a bit before CD burners became commonplace and affordable? Gracious, it is a good thing that people never decided to patent cooking techniques. We'd not be able to scramble our eggs without paying someone...or what if the guy that made alfredo for his sick wife ran and got a patent on mixing butter, cream, and parmesan? I often wish that computer technology and the way it is disseminated could be more like the art of cooking. |
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RE: Someone on MemeStreams MUST have something like this:
by k at 9:56 am EDT, May 16, 2007 |
skullaria wrote:
Before 1994 is the hard part. Isn't that a bit before CD burners became commonplace and affordable? Gracious, it is a good thing that people never decided to patent cooking techniques. We'd not be able to scramble our eggs without paying someone...or what if the guy that made alfredo for his sick wife ran and got a patent on mixing butter, cream, and parmesan? I often wish that computer technology and the way it is disseminated could be more like the art of cooking.
Well, it fundamentally *is* similar to cooking, but you're right that it's not treated that way. Software patents a bullshit, until they can amend the patent system to reduce the terms *a LOT* for software. None of this sitting on a software patent for 15 years or more and then trying to collect on something that's long since become presumptive. As for this topic, wouldn't old CD-ROM based encyclopedia be a good start? Didn't a lot of those have links to external resources? |
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RE: Someone on MemeStreams MUST have something like this:
by skullaria at 1:08 am EDT, May 18, 2007 |
They did - and so did most software that was a cd of a program, but with an online link to REGISTER the software. Kid's software had that. Perhaps at the crux of it a link is just a link - no matter where it goes. Perhaps that might be a point of argument. A link points. That is a given, so the direction it points to shouldn't matter. That is the silliest most unproductive patent ever. It points only to greed. |
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