Path: utzoo!dptcdc!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!ames!haven!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: yywrap() from lex library
Message-ID: <10066@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 18 Apr 89 13:20:10 GMT
References: <LFK.89Apr16010905@mbio.med.upenn.edu> <777@mks.UUCP> <1946@dataio.Data-IO.COM>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 19

In article <1946@dataio.Data-IO.COM> bright@dataio.Data-IO.COM (Walter Bright) writes:
>In article <777@mks.UUCP> egisin@mks.UUCP (Eric Gisin) writes:
></* Copyright 1988 Mortice Kern Systems Inc.
>< * All rights reserved.
>< */
><int yywrap() {	return 1; }
>ARGGH! I suppose I can't write any more functions that return 1, MKS
>has a lock on it now. Maybe I'll copyright all functions that return 2!

You should see AT&T's copyright on /bin/true -- they've copyrighted an
empty string!!!  We're all in violation!

Also note that there are fewer than 2^(16^16) mouse icon patterns for
Blit-like terminals.  Copyright them all and you could squeeze a lot of
terminal vendors for royalties.  This is not an entirely frivolous
example -- there's a company that claims royalties for the use of XOR
to reversibly overlay images on bitmap displays, and some Australian
companies are notorious for filing for international trademark rights
to any commercial name that seems to be about to take off.