From: mcgregor@netcom.com (Scott Mcgregor)
Subject: Re: Patents:  What they are.  What they aren't.  Other factors.
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest)
Date: Sun, 11 Oct 1992 05:14:28 GMT

In article <22808.Oct1104.20.0092@virtualnews.nyu.edu> brnstnd@nyu.edu (D. J. Bernstein) writes:
>In article <1992Oct9.002901.14966@netcom.com> mcgregor@netcom.com (Scott Mcgregor) writes:
>> I don't believe that you can be held to infringe LZW if you
>> use it to encrypt data
>
>Claim 1 of the Unisys LZW patent covers any system which engages in a
>certain process. That process is LZW. If you somehow use LZW for a
>different purpose, you will still infringe upon that patent.

No, it says "in a data compression...system".  If you are in a process
for making rubber, or image enhancement you are not in a "data
compression...system" and you don't infringe.

>Scott, you don't seem to realize that the courts have prohibited all
>patents upon mathematical algorithms, *even when* the patents are
>restricted to a particular field of technology. You talk about such
>restrictions as if they make all the difference in the world. They
>don't.

I do realize it.  I merely claim that it is defensable that the LZW
patent is not merely a mathematical algorithm, but a classical
process patent applied to data signalling.


>Ah. You have enough time in a week to write thousands of lines of
>pro-software-patent rhetoric in a public forum, and you don't have
>enough time to come up with a single example of a beneficial software
>patent to contrast to dozens of examples of hurtful software patents.

No, I don't have MORE time to spend on this because it isn't getting
anywhere. As you point out I have spent considerable time so far. I've
given considerable examples but you just don't happen to agree with
them. Dan has  given many examples that I don't agree with.  I don't see
how it provides any benefit for Dan to keep going on without any
causal proof that I accept, nor to me without causal proof that Dan
accepts. Nor to readers. 

>Fine. If you think that an anti-software-patent policy is dangerous, why
>don't you point out some of that ``conflicting evidence''?

I have in the past. I've given both anecdotal evidence (from my
personal experiences and those of others starting software firms) and
also from an economic analysis. Dan claimed that incentives to those
economic forces were unnecessary--we just disagree on this.

>Explain patent number 3380029, then.

I don't see what needs explaining that is in contradiction to what I
said.

>Okay, Scott, where is Paperback Software?

Gone I am afraid.  But where are all the firms that couldn't get
started that couldn't get funding?  Might there be more of the latter
than the former?

>> However, I do think that
>> substantial incentives are necessary if most of these are ever to
>> become available to the average everyday consumer or company.
>
>Please read prep.ai.mit.edu:pub/lpf/laf-fallacies.texi.Z. Incentives are
>not the purpose of patent law.

I've read it. Interesting, but seems to me to have an ax to grind. In
any case I agree that the purpose of the patent law is not to provide
incentives but to achieve "progress".  Incentives are a means to
achieve it. The measure of progress I am using is the extent to which
large numbers of people can personally benefit from applying the
invention.  The numbers of people who can benefit from using software
that is distributed by a company like Lotus is greater than the number
of people inconvenienced by not being able to use patented processes
without licensing.

>> LZW may be a mathematical algorithm.  But I don't agree that LZW is
>> patented.
>
>You are, unfortunately, wrong. Two companies own patents on LZW.

We disagree. I think that there are two companies who own patents on a
process that involves LZW and which are both in the data compression
field.  There probably shouldn't be. One or both should probably be
found to have a more narrow scope for be struck down entirely.  But in
my view these are patents on processes which involve LZW, and not
patents on LZW itself, since use of LZW for a purpose other than dat
compression, or without signal means or storage means wouldn't violate
either one.  But Dan and I disagree about this apparently to no resolution.

>Please retract that offensive statement. I have no financial interest in
>Storer's patent. I am angry that Storer hid AP coding from the community
>by failing to publish it properly, and I see the software industry as a
>whole being damaged by insanely broad monopolies, so I would be happy to
>testify as an expert witness in any compression patent court case; but I
>do not have a ``personal stake'' in seeing Storer's obsolete compression
>patent struck down.

Dan has my apologies.  I don't mean to be offensive.  Dan has
claimed that he has been personally hurt by the Storer patent because
Dan  couldn't distribute his software as he wanted (freely?). That
seemed to me personal stake. Since that apparently is not true, it was
my mistake to assume so and I stand corrected.



-- 

Scott L. McGregor		mcgregor@netcom.com
President			tel: 408-985-1824
Prescient Software, Inc.	fax: 408-985-1936
3494 Yuba Avenue
San Jose, CA 95117-2967



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