[107423] in Cypherpunks
Re: How patents can subvert copyright ...
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Robert Hettinga)
Wed Jan 13 18:57:05 1999
In-Reply-To: <00eb01be3f4b$aa343d80$4164a8c0@mve21>
Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1999 18:36:50 -0500
To: "Ernest Hua" <hua@teralogic-inc.com>, <hapgood@pobox.com>
From: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
Cc: <dcsb@ai.mit.edu>, "Digital Bearer Settlement List" <dbs@philodox.com>,
<e$@vmeng.com>, <cryptography@c2.net>, <cypherpunks@cyberpass.net>
Reply-To: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
At 6:23 PM -0500 on 1/13/99, Ernest Hua wrote:
> It would be interesting for someone to patent
> "self-help" books, let's say, if that person
> was the first known publisher of self-help.
>
> I am sure that the "xxx for Dummies" guy could
> patent the use of that class of books as a
> method of attracting a certain segment of the
> market place.
If you can reduce it to software, and thus, in patent lingo, practice, you
can patent it, apparently.
Welcome to the future. Everything can be made a machine. Almost everything,
anyway, and mostly subject to processing and bandwidth, I bet.
Cheers,
Robert Hettinga
-----------------
Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@philodox.com>
Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
