[Corpora-List] Microsoft patents verb conjugations

[Roger Shlomo Harris]

On Thursday, September 07, 2006 12:26 PM
Subject: Re: [Corpora-List] Microsoft patents verb conjugations
Lluís Padró wrote:
>>> All this is quite nonsense, what they are claiming for is a verb morfological analyzer/generator, 
>>> and there have been scholar publications on that for at least 20 years, so the patent claim 
>>> shouldn't be granted.

If it has not been patented then there is the opportunity, honest or otherwise, to apply for a patent. 

There are apparently companies paying protection money to patent pirates who discovered an 
unpatented technique by reverse engineering or other sleuthing means. They were granted a patent 
and then demanded and obtained money from the true originators. The amount demanded is usually 
less than the cost of protection through the judicial system. 

Apparently the Assembler code routines which cause a cursor to blink were at one time patented and 
may still be. These may be apocryphal stories but I have read similar accounts about economic life in 
Silicon Valley.

I understand that part of the problem is that patent examiners are more familiar with tangible, 
three-dimensional inventions than with software.

Kind regards,

Roger Harris.
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