[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: British Telecom owns Hyperlink?
I read the original posting. My real point was that there are lots of possibilities. Here are some more. - BT Management knows they don't have a chance and they don't care. They're automatons responding to a stimulus (the suggestion, generated somewhere in the bowels of the bureaucracy, that they just might be able to collect money from this). Some suggestions, no matter how silly, must be given a response, to avoid the possibility of being held liable for NOT giving a response. - They don't know they don't have a chance because most of them know so little about computers that they still require someone else to logon for them. - They have no idea this is going on in the first place because the whole thing is being carried out from one bureaucracy to another far beneath the management level. They're too busy attending each other's Important Events. - They know they have just about zero chance, but they have calculated that a very tiny probability multiplied by a very huge number (licensing fees for hyperlinking) is worth it anyway. After all ... Univac (I know they're not Univac anymore) collects fees for the GIF compression algorithm after years of "public domain" use. All right ... I admit it ... they're all pretty pathetic ... but my second point is that we're all pretty pathetic for putting up with it. (Where's the guillotine and the bullet pocked wall when we need it?) -----Original Message----- From: owner-xml-dev@x... [mailto:owner-xml-dev@x...]On Behalf Of Bob Kline Sent: Monday, June 26, 2000 2:56 PM To: Dan Mabbutt Cc: XML Developers List Subject: RE: British Telecom owns Hyperlink? On Mon, 26 Jun 2000, Dan Mabbutt wrote: > OK ... Thinking Dilbert, I can imagine one reason why BT did this > that doesn't put them in a pathetic light. (If my idea has any > truth to it, all of us are in a pathetic light for allowing it to > happen.) > > My experience is that lawyers will sue for any cause that might > yield fees for themselves. If a lawyer can convince a court to > entertain a suit against management for not protecting an "asset" of > the company (the hyperlink patent rights), fees can be generated. > What if BT management is simply protecting themselves from frivolous > lawsuits by filing frivolous patent applications? I think you must have missed the original posting. According to the news report, BT isn't just filing patent applications, they're trying to (or pretending to try to -- according to the Dilbert theory) collect royalties. If they're not pretending, then I don't understand how their actions could be construed as anything but pathetic. You don't for a moment suppose that they have any chance after all these years of convincing a court to force everyone who uses hyperlinks to pay BT for the privilege, do you? -- Bob Kline *************************************************************************** This is xml-dev, the mailing list for XML developers. To unsubscribe, mailto:majordomo@x...&BODY=unsubscribe%20xml-dev List archives are available at http://xml.org/archives/xml-dev/ *************************************************************************** *************************************************************************** This is xml-dev, the mailing list for XML developers. To unsubscribe, mailto:majordomo@x...&BODY=unsubscribe%20xml-dev List archives are available at http://xml.org/archives/xml-dev/ ***************************************************************************
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