Path: utzoo!telecom-request Date: Wed, 15 May 1991 19:21:59 GMT From: Mark Fulk Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Hayes Wins Damages on its Command Set Patent Message-ID: Organization: Computer Science Department University of Rochester Sender: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 364, Message 4 of 11 Lines: 23 Others have made some good points about overbreadth of the patent, and prior art. I am bothered by another aspect: triviality. My three year old son has more complicated and better ideas every day. If the Hayes patent holds water, I'm going to patent the phrase "excuse me" in its use to interrupt a conversation. Seriously, a patent should only be granted if the invention solves a problem that many have found difficult, or if the new solution is not trivial to find and offers significant advantages over older methods. I AM in the process of patenting a few of my own ideas, all of them much more complex than the Hayes patent, and have in fact rejected the notion of patenting other ideas as, well, patently ludicrous. (pause) +++ (pause) is, in my view, not even an idea. I have decided not to patent much better inventions (such as a nice way to keep track of transient allocations in LISP, for example). Mark