[FYI] U.S.: An Interview With the Patents Office Director and Tim O'Reilly

["Axel H Horns" <horns@t-online.de>]

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/patents/2000/05/24/PizzoFiles.html

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Who's Really Being Protected?
An Interview With the Patents Office Director and Tim O'Reilly

by Stephen Pizzo 05/24/2000  

Late last year, when the patent office granted Amazon.com a patent on 
its "One Click" online purchase system, it hit home: Software 
patents, especially patents on Internet software, are likely to have 
a profound effect on the future of the Internet, the software 
industry in general, and the Open Source community in particular. In 
this interview you will hear Patent Office Director Q. Todd Dickinson 
equate Internet/software patents with any other telecommunications 
industry issue, while O'Reilly Associates CEO Tim O'Reilly doesn't 
agree with him, with the legislation, or with the very idea that 
programmers can prove patentability.   

Dickinson and O'Reilly disagree on nearly everything, in fact, from 
the degree of unique ownership of most Internet innovations to the 
possibilities of establishing "prior art" to resolve software-patent 
disputes. Read on or listen to the interview, as Stephen Pizzo tries 
to moderate between government lawyer/administrator Dickinson and 
Open Source advocate/writer/programmer O'Reilly.  

[...]

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