Author: Russell Reagan
Date: 20:01:58 01/07/04
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On January 07, 2004 at 09:59:48, Robert Hyatt wrote: >No. You can write anything you want. You simply can't sell it or give it away. I hate to disagree with you Bob, and I find this whole thing to be very silly, and while I did have an interest in creating a Gothic Chess playing program (or at the very least a perft calculator for the game), I would not even consider it anymore because of this ridiculous pattent nonsense, but, here is what the U.S. Patent Office defines a pattent to be: "a property right granted by the Government of the United States of America to an inventor “to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling the invention throughout the United States or importing the invention into the United States” for a limited time in exchange for public disclosure of the invention when the patent is granted." http://www.uspto.gov/main/glossary/#p They key phrase being, "to exclude others from making..." To me this says that if someone has a pattent on something, you can't even make it in your basement even if you only use it for yourself. Personally I think that's a load of cow dung, that I as a programmer am apparently supposed to know every pattent by heart before I write any piece of code for fear it may violate someone's pattent, but that is what the law appears to say...
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