[8555] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Multimedia has been patented
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Glenn S. Tenney)
Mon Nov 22 14:22:07 1993
Date: Mon, 22 Nov 1993 11:21:35 -0800
To: com-priv@psi.com
From: tenney@netcom.com (Glenn S. Tenney)
At 10:38 AM 11/22/93 -0600, Craig A. Finseth wrote:
>But you don't mention a USENET News feed, regular scans of FTP sites,
>use of Gopher or Archie. ...
>Paper is not irrelevant.
When I last spoke with the commissioner in charge of information services,
it was clear that they are definitely looking into all sorts of far out
things -- like the Internet :-) Seriously, they are getting started but
it takes time. I know that one area they were looking at was the
dissemination of patent info to the net. They already use on-line services
like chemical abstracts and the like, but there isn't anything quite like
that for software. Mailing lists and netnews are NOT in the same league!
Sure, there's great content (amongst the flames) for many of us, but it is
not directly searchable for technically useful information. The University
of Michigan is working with the PTO on this (I'm awaiting more up to date
info, the last I knew was 1-3 years ago...).
There is also a slight problem (non-problem?): The patent law defines
prior art to include printed publications. It is not clear whether the
law does or does not include non-print media. I suggested that that one
word be changed, but nothing became of my suggestion...
---
Glenn Tenney
tenney@netcom.com Amateur radio: AA6ER
Voice: (415) 574-3420 Fax: (415) 574-0546
