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Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2000 02:46:28 +0000
From: Paul Richards <paul@originative.co.uk>
Organization: Originative Solutions Ltd
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To: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com>
Cc: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in>,
	Arun Sharma <adsharma@sharmas.dhs.org>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: On "intelligent people" and "dangers to BSD"
References: <200003232352.QAA03123@usr08.primenet.com>
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Terry Lambert wrote:
> 
> > > > > actually the only thing affected by the patent, in any case,
> > > > > since that is Unisys' (Terry Welch's, actually) contribution.
> > > > > The LZ (Lempel-Ziv) decoder will decode both, and is not patent
> > > > > protected.  I would have to look it up, but I'm pretty sure
> > > > > that patent has expired, unless it was submerged (filed but not
> > > > > executed) prior to GIF images becoming common on the net.  At
> > > >
> > > > I think I read that it's supposed to expire in 2003.
> > >
> > > Try 1999:
> > >
> > > http://www.patents.ibm.com/details?pn=US04558302__
> >
> > Isn't the lifetime of a patent 20 years from date of filing? The
> > above page says it was filed in June 1983.
> 
> It is 14 years from date of issue for patents filed before the
> new patent law took effect.  There are still plenty of submerged
> patents out there which were filed before the cut-off date, when
> the new rules went into effect.  They will remain submerged until
> they are executed.  Think of them as "trained attack patents".
> 
> Patents filed after the cut-off date are 20 years from date of
> filing, regardless of date of issue.
> 
> The reason this is so is that the US has a Constitutional
> premise that something which is not illegal can not be made
> illegal.  This is called "ipos facto"; a loose translation
> is "a law after the fact".  This is why you can own short
> barrelled shotguns in the US, so long as they were made
> before the law making them "illegal" went into effect.
> 
> The consequences of not having this legal premise codified in
> the Constitution would be the ability to:
> 
> 1)      Dislike something that happened
> 2)      Get elected
> 3)      Pass a law making it illegal
> 4)      Arresting the original person who did the thing you
>         didn't like, and trying them under the new law
> 
> In one word: tyranny.

This happens all the time in the UK these days. You'd be amazed what
suddenly becomes illegal all of a sudden, one of the most farcical was a
law banning the consumption of T-bone steaks.


Paul.


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