RE: Patent junk was Re: open source.

[thomas@xxxxxxxxxxx]

On Wed, 22 August 2001, "Hall, Philip" wrote:

> Again, often the patent is for something that cannot yet (or the company is
> not in a position to) be productised - go for a brief browse around any of
> the online patent offices (be warned you could end up spending lots of time
> browsing !) and you'll see lots of patents for stuff that will never, ever
> see the light of day.


And possibly one or two that you HOPE will never show up:

http://164.195.100.11/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%274,959,559%27.WKU.&OS=PN/4,959,559&RS=PN/4,959,559

U.S. Patent #4,959,559 to the U.S. government, essentially for a real live 
photon torpedo. (They even refer to "the Klingon battle cruiser"!)

Tom Liotta

--
Tom Liotta
The PowerTech Group, Inc.
19426 68th Avenue South
Kent, WA 98032
Phone  253-872-7788
Fax  253-872-7904
http://www.400Security.com


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