[Freegis-list] GIS Patents at USPTO

[Bernhard Reiter]

On Fri, Jan 14, 2005 at 01:20:18PM +0000, Roger Longhorn wrote:
>    Has anyone actually done a full search of GI/GIS related patents
>    (software and methods) on USPTO and reported it to the GI/GIS
>    community(ies)?

I am not aware of any.

Note that it might be dangerous to search and read software patents 
as a software developer.
You cannot decide if it applies to you and if you read them
and you are dragged into court, you might even get a higher
punishment because you were aware of the issues in detail.

This is why Ferguson and Scheiner 2003 [1] basically recommend to
not read software patents if you want to design or build software.

	Bernhard

[1]
Practical Cryptography
cover of Practical Cryptography Niels Ferguson and Bruce Schneier

John Wiley & Sons, 2003 
http://www.macfergus.com/pc/index.html


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