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From: peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva)
Subject: Re: hayes lawsuit
Message-ID: <Q1GBD=E@xds13.ferranti.com>
Reply-To: peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva)
Organization: Xenix Support, FICC
References: <1991May17.214226.10776@m.cs.uiuc.edu> <7e19222w164w@mantis.co.uk>
Date: Mon, 20 May 91 22:27:09 GMT

In article <7e19222w164w@mantis.co.uk> mathew@mantis.co.uk (CNEWS MUST DIE!) writes:
> Unfortunately, quite what is a reasonable amount of payment is open to
> debate. Also, there would be problems with free software; but then, software
> which costs 5 cents in patent payments is as near to free as makes no
> difference to most people.

Let's say the payment is epsilon. No matter how many copies of a patent
I license, the payment is lost in the noise. What is not lost is the
patent search, the paperwork, etc. Let's see... my latest program
used:

	binary trees.
	subroutines.
	callback functions.
	UNIX-style argument parsing.
	linked lists.
	floating point arithmetic.
	integer arithmetic.
	nested loops.

Lets' say all these algorithms (equivalent in complexity to some of the
patented algorithms) were patented. I'd have to get Ferranti to cut 7
checks for license fees. Even if those checks totalled $1.44, it'd still
cost Ferranti a couple of hundred bucks for the paperwork on the program.
And this is for a one-off job I needed to generate some reports for load
balancing. <200 lines long, total.

Think of all the possible patents a large program could violate! That's
the problem: software is by far the most complex thing we have yet devised.
The number of potential patent violations in a relatively small program
quickly becomes exponential once a significant number of software patents
exist.
-- 
Peter da Silva; Ferranti International Controls Corporation; +1 713 274 5180;
Sugar Land, TX  77487-5012;         `-_-' "Have you hugged your wolf, today?"