Re: [Fsfe-uk] Bromcom undead ?

[Robin Green]

On Tue, Nov 30, 2004 at 10:02:17AM +0000, Ralph Janke wrote:
> >Quite so. Any fair minded person would see that transferring
> >registration data over wireless when it was previously done over cable
> >is no different from any data that was on cable then being transferred
> >over wireless so what is unusual or inventive about it?
> >
> > 
> >
> That would be found true today, I suppose. However, the judge decided in 
> the year when
> Bromcom "invented" and patented it, it was a knowledge only a radio 
> technology expert would have had,
> but not somebody employed by a school running a computer network and 
> deploying a registration system.

Is that really what the judge said? This is a really pernicious legal doctrine.
It implies that you can get around even the non-obviousness requirement
by... selling to customers totally unskilled in the relevant art(s)? Bizarre!

> I disagree with that statement, since not only radio specialists would 
> have known it, I had at that time
> a Masetrs Degree in Computer Science and was lecturing this protocol in 
> undergrad and graduate courses
> at University. I have never been a radio specialist and would have still 
> deployed a system in such a way.
> 
> Therefore, I would despute the novelty or non-obvious assessment of the 
> judge. However because of legal reasons, I
> believe nothing can be done in that way.

I would hope that, if nothing else, an appeal can be raised based on the
claim that the legal doctrine the judge is employing to decide something
"non-obvious" or "novel", does not make sense.

-- 
Robin

pgphYhQGEtiig.pgp
Description: PGP signature