Re: [mv] I am looking for source code of MV's earliest versions

[Birgitt Funk <birgitt@booktraders.com>]

******    message to minivend-users from Birgitt Funk <birgitt@booktraders.com>     ******


On Sun, 2 Jan 2000, Mr. Christopher F. Miller wrote:

> ******    message to minivend-users from "Mr. Christopher F. Miller" <cfm@maine.com>     ******
> 
> On Sun, Jan 02, 2000 at 07:59:07PM -0500, Birgitt Funk wrote:
> > ******    message to minivend-users from Birgitt Funk <birgitt@booktraders.com>     ******
> > 
> > 
> > Hi MiniVendors,
> > 
> > I would be very grateful, if someone could mail me the earliest versions
> > of MV's source code (everything before February 1997 back to February
> > 1996). 

> By anonymous ftp to gray.maine.com, /pub/awilcox.
> 
> Requires perl4.096 (or earlier) ;^)
> 

Great, thank you very much. 8-)

Now, I like to have also the first released version from Mike Heins'
MiniVend after March 1996, everything which was released from then
on til September 1997, please .... I think I should somewhere
have a tape which has eventually MiniVend 2.3 or 2.6 on it. But
I am not sure and it is not accessible to me now. I made my first
backups I think in October 1996 and if I don't have this then the
next ones are from summer 1997. I like to have an archive of all
MiniVend releases from March 1996 to September 1997. 

Did you know that a Harvard Professor said in the following article
that it takes $ 1.2 million to challenge the validity of a patent
and that on average of eight hours is spent by the government officals
in the U.S. Department of Commerce to evaluate "Prior Art" of a patent.

	http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1151,4296,00.html

I have to say that I find that mind-boggling. Here are some links, which 
show a little bit what "in theory" could/should be done (if I were a rich
man, la-la-la-la-la...), mostly in relation to the actual patent at issue
and the U.S.Code, which IMHO gives plenty of room to prove that the patent
they issued to Amazon doesn't comply with their own regulations.
      
The Amazon patent itsself:

http://164.195.100.11/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=
1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1='5960411'.WKU.&OS=PN/5960411&RS=
PN/5960411

Amazon sues B&N:

http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1007-200-922281.html

Winning the first round:

http://proxy-mail.mailcity.lycos.com/bin/redirector.cgi?http://news.cnet.com/new
s/0-1005-200-1476392.html?

Patent Law:

        http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/35/
                                                   
Patentability of Inventions and Grant of Pantens:
        http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/35/pII.html

Right of priority:
        http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/35/119.html

Oath of applicant:
        http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/35/115.html

Prior Art of Citations to Office and Reexamination of Patents
        http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/35/307.html

Comment from an Intellectual Property attorney:
quote from Russ Homsy :

Re: Inappropriateness of the patent system and scale of
    the battle.     
    Date:
    Thu, 10 Dec 1998 16:34:29 -0500
    From:
    Russ Homsy <rhomsy@mediaone.net>
    Newsgroups:
    linuxworld.forums.articles.1998-11-thesource
                     
 Are you guys talking about the situation where software is *first*
distributed pursuant to the open source agreement, and then, that same
software is patented by another corporation?  If that's what your saying,
then the fact that the original open-source author has a copyright isn't
what "defeats" the patent.

The fact that the corporation isn't the "original inventor" is what would
invalidate the patent.  Section 102 of Title 35 of USC states that the
patent will be granted only to the original inventor.  Now, if they can
prove that they invented it before the open-source author, then their
patent will prevail, and any subsequent reproductions of the patented work
will be deamed an infringement.  The open source author does not *need* to
obtain a patent to protect his/her rights in their work. They can offer
the software to the public domain and notobtain a patent. Authors of such
software should make good notes as to when they devised the idea of the
patentable subject matter, and when they reduced this subject matter to
practice.
                               
One last quote of U.S. Code which I find is hitting the point:

 US Code as of: 01/26/98

 Sec. 103. Conditions for patentability; non-obvious subject matter

     (a) A patent may not be obtained though the invention is not
identically disclosed or described as set forth in section 102 of this
title, if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented
and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have
been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having
ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains.
Patentability shall not be negatived by the manner in which the
invention was made.
                           
A couple of other interesting links about patents with regard to 
Open Software are:

	http://lpf.ai.mit.edu/
	http://www.freepatents.org/

I am a bit in doubt if I am allowed to use this list to spread
the links about patents. So, if I am going beyond the acceptable
with this, let me know and I will stop it.

Birgitt Funk


-
To unsubscribe from the list, DO NOT REPLY to this message.  Instead, send
email with 'UNSUBSCRIBE minivend-users' in the body to Majordomo@minivend.com.
Archive of past messages: http://www.minivend.com/minivend/minivend-list