[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Martijn van Oosterhout) writes: > On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 03:07:17AM +0930, Shane Ambler wrote: >> Exactly. The real problem is that the first one to apply for a patent >> gets it. It really doesn't matter who invents it. If we have patents >> that cover our work then we can control who uses it and for what >> purpose, also preventing others from patenting our ideas and stopping us >> from using them. > > There are places that offer cheap alternatives which are not patents > but more "declarations of prior art". The point being not so much that > you get a patent but that you prevent others from getting one on the > same thing. As in the patent office will actually use it when > determining prior art, rather than just ignoring anything on internet. > > Cheaper, but still not cheap....
My understanding is that this is one of the reasons for existence of the _IBM Systems Journal_; IBM occasionally discovers things that, for one reason or another, they do not wish to patent, but by publishing such things in a published journal, that provides a well-documented source of "prior art." http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/sj/ -- "cbbrowne","@","acm.org" http://cbbrowne.com/info/rdbms.html Hail to the sun god, he sure is a fun god, Ra, Ra, Ra!! -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
