Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!dogie.macc.wisc.edu!uwvax!rutgers!att!cbnewsh!wcs
From: wcs@cbnewsh.ATT.COM (Bill Stewart 201-949-0705 ho95c.att.com!wcs)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Probelms With Protecting Intellectual Property
Keywords: copyright microcode apple (tm) trash can (tm) unix (tm)
Message-ID: <272@cbnewsh.ATT.COM>
Date: 25 Apr 89 19:56:39 GMT
References: <233@imspw6.UUCP> <740@harrier.ukc.ac.uk>
Reply-To: wcs@cbnewsh.ATT.COM (Bill Stewart 201-949-0705 ho95c.att.com!wcs)
Organization: Your typical phone company involved in your typical daydream
Lines: 28

In article <740@harrier.ukc.ac.uk> mch@ukc.ac.uk (Martin Howe) writes:
} Part of the problem is deciding what is an original idea and what is not. There

	Yup.

} is a story that Bell beat Edison to the Patent Office by 15 minutes with his
} telephone design. Even if this is only apocryphal, it could easily have

	The competitor was actually named Gray; it wasn't Edison.
	On  the other hand, there was this undertaker named Strowger who
	invented the  dial telephone  because he thought one of his
	competitors was bribing the phone company operators to direct
	business his way.  He offered to license it to Bell Telephone,
	but they wouldn't buy it,  so he licensed it to someone  else
	(?General Telephone?)   After all,  who'd want to dial a phone
	instead of asking an operator who knew where the  person you
	wanted to call really  was and gave you good personal service?
	We paid licensing  fees to them for *years* after that!

} This sort of thing is normally decided by judges, but they are usually laymen
} w.r.t. computer science and anyway, "the law is an ass" (no, I don't know
} who said that :-). 
	It was Mr. Micawber, a Dickens character.  He may have been
	fictitious, but he sure was correct.

-- 
# Bill Stewart, AT&T Bell Labs 2G218 Holmdel NJ 201-949-0705 ho95c.att.com!wcs
# also found at 201-271-4712 tarpon.att.com!wcs