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Nieminen Juha wrote:
>
> Jerome M. BERGER <jbe### [at] enst fr> wrote:
> : They didn't patent something that was previously published, they just
> : waited until it was firmly established before trying to enforce their
> : patent
>
> Of course it was published.
> Those two statements are contradictory. How could people use it if it wasn't
> published?
>
I may be wrong, but I believe the chronology is as follows:
1. the LZ algorythm was published
2. Unisys developped some changes to this algorithm
3. Unisys patented those changes
4. Unisys published those changees (*after* having patented them) under
the name LZW
5. the LZW method became very succesful (espescially in gif) and Unisys
let it develop
6. now Unisys want to enforce their patent
Point 5 is the reason why I think such a patent becomes unenforceable
in France (besides the problem with patenting an algorithm the exact
status of which I don't know)
> If I invent a new and revolutionary algorithm for raytracing 10 times
> faster than any current method and write an article here explaining it,
> I couldn't patent it here in Finland for two reasons:
> 1) Algorithms can't be patented, only industrially profitable inventions
> (mostly real devices) can be patented.
That's a good thing IMO, but I don't know how international la works in
that respect...
> 2) Even if they could, I couldn't patent this because I published it
> in a public forum (even if I deleted it an hour after sending it).
Yes but Unisys patented it *before* publishing it...
>
> There is a case here in Finland where a patent was denied because the
> applicant had put the specifications of his invention for 1 day in the WWW.
>
That's stupid I think, but it's better than being able to patent
anything and everything as is the case in some countries :)
Jerome
--
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* they'll tell you what can't * mailto:ber### [at] inamecom
* be done and why... * http://www.enst.fr/~jberger
* Then do it. *
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