Russg wrote:
I see it as a problem with legaleze. I can't understand the US Patent office statement. And I can't really understand the argument here. There was a guy who could make glass flowers like no-one else. They were beautiful. People wanted him to patent it so they could find out how he did it. He didn't patent it. It increased the value of his work before and after he died. So, the moral is, don't patent stuff that can't be reverse engineered, it doesn't do you any good.
I largely agree with you about the utility of patents--a very mixed bag. The discussion here had to do with someone proposing that the Atari technical details were not released with the machine because of patent concerns--a position clearly not justified by law. -michael NadaPong: Network game demo for Apple II computers! Home page: http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/ "The wastebasket is our most important design tool--and it's seriously underused."