From owner-freebsd-chat Thu Oct 11 7:10:58 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from guru.mired.org (okc-65-31-203-60.mmcable.com [65.31.203.60]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 0CFCE37B405 for ; Thu, 11 Oct 2001 07:10:55 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 33350 invoked by uid 100); 11 Oct 2001 14:10:54 -0000 From: Mike Meyer MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <15301.43118.69706.571120@guru.mired.org> Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2001 09:10:54 -0500 To: "Ted Mittelstaedt" Cc: Subject: RE: Use of the UNIX Trademark In-Reply-To: <007701c15216$867d47c0$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> References: <20011010140126.M387@blossom.cjclark.org> <007701c15216$867d47c0$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> X-Mailer: VM 6.90 under 21.1 (patch 14) "Cuyahoga Valley" XEmacs Lucid X-face: "5Mnwy%?j>IIV\)A=):rjWL~NB2aH[}Yq8Z=u~vJ`"(,&SiLvbbz2W`;h9L,Yg`+vb1>RG% *h+%X^n0EZd>TM8_IB;a8F?(Fb"lw'IgCoyM.[Lg#r\ Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Ted Mittelstaedt types: > One thing people forget about patents is that they create a permanent record > of a process or device. While the most spectacular patents (new drugs, etc.) > get plenty of attention in various medical journals and such, the majority of > patents > are granted for small little things, for example a hand tool. These new > inventions generally never see wide distribution and if there wasn't ever a > patent on them, the invention might disappear forever. With a patent, someone > 20 or 30 years later that needs a particular thing can do a patent search and > see > if anyone has ever manufactured an invention that solves what they need to do, > and if they find an expired patent on an invention they can use the contact > info > to perhaps dig up a set of plans for it. This is sort of like open source for mechanical devices. A client of mine had an air rifle that had been orphaned - it being nearly 40 years old. He really liked the thing, and was rather upset when it broke and he found out that nobody would repair it. Looking into new guns made the problem worse, as he considered them both overpriced and lower quality. I got involved to do a patent search for him, and lo and behold we turned up the original patent for the thing - including plans. This made it possible for him to repair it himself. http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Q: How do you make the gods laugh? A: Tell them your plans. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message