This Is Patently Out Of Control!

From the Wintellect blog.

Today, I discovered that Microsoft was filing a patent for “an operator that returns true when two memory addresses are not equal”! See http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%2220040230959%22.PGNR.&OS=DN/20040230959&RS=DN/20040230959. Surely, we can still come up with better ideas than this to patent, can’t we? Plus, I think there is a lot of prior art around this particular invention.

[Via Wintellog]

Comments

3 responses

Pat • November 23rd, 2004
Bill has finally lost it

Steven Padfield • December 6th, 2004
The purpose, of course, is so that a competitor will not be able to patent it first and sue Microsoft for using it. Most of Microsoft's patents are of this nature.

Hugh • April 11th, 2005
How can this happen?

If MS publicly use it first, then it cannot be patented subsequently.