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Note the date: 1994. There was plenty of concepts that lead to his patent, but someone with deep understanding of the prior art has to look at the patent and someone with deep pockets has to attempt to overturn it. There isn't a joke in there because he could win and if he does, he has to bargain to collect. Northrup is an example. This is the lone hacker, the hero of the netGen sitting down to become wealthy by his own talent and creation. And who will step up to oppose him? MS can afford to pay him so they don't have to. Some corporations will fight him or try to stop him by other means but if the patent holds, eventually they pay up. Who will try to overturn the patent system itself, who will catcall and humiliate and light torches, who will burn down the very system designed to enable them to benefit from their work? netGen will. Deliciously ironic. len -----Original Message----- From: Jeff Rafter [mailto:jeffrafter@d...] But wait... isn't there a wealth of prior art? I don't understand the claim. So he made a system that connects through TCP/IP and returns the results of a software service on the Internet (web). Uh, I thought that was what browsers did (e.g. Mosaic). That's also what credit companies have done for years and years. I'm just a young pup-- you all start talking about patents and lawyers and I head for the skatepark... this one doesn't make sense though. And isn't his operating system patent just like WIMP (was that what it was called?) that let's you run windows apps on Linux? or at best JAVA? Write Once Run Anywhere? Did I miss the joke? I was laughing when I read it.... <g/>
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