Rik van Riel wrote:
>
> [Non-member submission]
>
> On Fri, 1 Sep 2000, Al Billings wrote:
> > Rik wrote:
> >
> > > > CYMM SAYS: If MS were a real monopoly; it would be poor
> > > > marketing. Now, with Open Source, this strategy seems to be
> > > > plain stupid. "Intellectual property" as a concept has gone
> > > > wayyy too far. The pendulum is about to swing the other way...
> > > > it's a built in negative feedback loop.
> > >
> > > Except that they're using patent law (and trade secret law
> > > extended to infinite patent law?) to try and remove open
> > > source software from the marketplace.
> >
> > Who is? In what case?
>
> There's for example the case of that "new" multimedia streaming
> format Microsoft has (basically a bunch of old, standard, not
> patented formats in a trivial wrapper).
>
> That format is patented by Microsoft (don't ask me how, data
> formats are not functional and as such not supposed to be
> patentable)
How is a data format not functional? Compuserve has rights to the GIF file
format, and that precedes anything MS has done, so this is not a new thing.
Morse had a patent on Morse Code, which is a data format. TELEX teletype
machines and the format of their data was patented by their original
manufacturers. Even the original data format used in punchcard chains used in
english cloth factories in the 19th century were patented. The data formats used
by Database America, NDC, AllWest, and many other companies in the data
processing industry are patented as well. A data format is a tool just as much
as a hole punch card is a tool. It is merely a rather intangible tool, but a
tool nonetheless.
> and Microsoft has used the patent to intimidate
> one open source multimedia player into stopping supporting
> that format... ;(
What open source multimedia player is that? Please give us facts, not claims.
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