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RE: More patent funnies!

• From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
• To: Tim Bray <tbray@t...>, xml-dev@l...
• Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2001 15:58:08 -0500

It the patent is as detailed and accurate as the article 
appears to indicate, this guy could conceivably become a 
very wealthy guy.  Given what we knew was coming in the 
late eighties with regards to hypermedia systems, markup, 
and enterprise systems, it is conceivable he did conceptualize 
the details as well as the broad outlines.  The web itself 
was only a surprise to those outside the hypertext community. 
The CALS people understood the potential for services.  So 
the devil is in the details of what he patented given the 
broad outlines were known and published.

On the other hand, one behavior of corporations and communties 
in reaction to such a broad patent with considerable financial 
repercussions is to financially hold the owner's head under 
water until they quit kicking.  This is the problem of having 
a very valuable patent and insufficient resources to defend it.

len

-----Original Message-----
From: Tim Bray [mailto:tbray@t...]

http://www.linuxgram.com/article.pl?sid=01/10/02/1754221&section=186

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