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From: larry@belch.Berkeley.EDU (Larry Foard)
Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk
Subject: Way to fight trivial patents
Message-ID: <1990Oct7.175737.12808@agate.berkeley.edu>
Date: 7 Oct 90 17:57:37 GMT
Sender: usenet@agate.berkeley.edu (USENET Administrator)
Organization: University of California Berkeley
Lines: 34

It seems that recently the computer industry has been assaulted by a wave
of frivolous patents. Many of these are trivially obvious things such as
storing the data behind a window in a windowing system. If all trivial things
are patented programming would be like trying to write a book if half
of english words where copyrighted. 
The network provides an interesting way out of this problem, most trivial
(and not so trivial) ideas have been discussed on technical news groups
at one time. It would seem (lawyers correct me if I am wrong) that one
could print out all newsgroups and have the contents notirized (sp?) to
provide proof that an idea was already in existance before a given patent
was applied for. A non profit organization could provide a tremendous 
service by maintaining these records and making them available to any
one fighting a patent. Not only would this invalidate many patents that
are granted but it would provide a deterent to prevent people from patenting
everything and the kitchen sink. It would also help if a fund to help 
defeat patents was setup so that people who would normally have to submit
to blackmail could have the patents thrown out instead.               

Assuming this idea would work are there any organizations willing to
undertake this kind of effort? It could even be done by a number of
individuals, each volunteering to keep records of a single news group.

Now for something completely different:
 A previous message claimed that the FBI was tracing FTP uploads and
downloads, fortunitly on the network it is possible to know when some one
is "looking". A simple rewritting of the finger demon to record requests
would detect a system like that described in the previous message. It
might be worth while to check out all FTP sites for those that finger
you in responce to an FTP connection. 

P.S. Would it be illegal to copy the entire X windows source into your
 .plan file and precede to download every program off an SS infested site?

P.P.S. I'm not about to find out :)