15 Dec
2004
15 Dec
'04
9:50 a.m.
The reason I forwarded the e-mail is that, as opposed to what has been
said in the list, it turns out that stupid patents can be used to win
(also stupid) court trials. Scary!
On dc, 2004-12-15 at 12:03, Pau Arumi wrote:
--
/**********************************
********* Xavier Amatriain ********
****** Music Technology Group *****
** IUA- Universitat Pompeu Fabra **
****** www.iua.upf.es/~xamat ******
***********************************/
Actually, the
patent is not on graph-traversal as such, but on graph-
traversal in context with virtual instrumentation having some kind of
adjustable front-panel on screen ... It is a "methods" patent that only
applies when all the ingredients are in place. The prior art shown in
court was overturned in part because it did not use windows and mouse.
At the beginning I thought that Mathworks didn't tried to claim priort art, and as
you say I read with surprise that they actually did: pages 8-10 of this pdf [1] (which I
think is an overview of the trial process, found here [2] ) They showed two systems
Sutherland and MATRIX (I know nothing about them).
[1] http://cafc.bna.com/03-1540.pdf
[2] http://patentlaw.typepad.com/patent/2004/09/federal_circuit.html
Probably Mathworks did a poor job finding examples of prior art, and they concentrated
too much on defending they where not infringing the patent. Anyway, I find this case very
sad. Hopefully --like Erik said before-- this is a step towards the colapse of the US
patents system...
Pau ArumÃ
http://www.iua.upf.es/mtg/clam