Messages in this thread |  | | | From | "Jordan Mendelson" <> | | Subject | RE: GGI Project Unhappy On Linux | | Date | Mon, 30 Mar 1998 11:39:01 -0500 |
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> You could not say before you got them :-) If there are used some patented > things AND this could be avoided then -- no. In other cases -- > yes, you could. > But you could not use name "coca-cola" for product ...
[this is way offtopic]
The patent on the Coca-Cola recipe expired years ago (last I checked there was an 18 year cap on patents in the US). This is why things like Diffie-Hellman algorithms are now free, you can not issue another patent on them because they are considered "mainstream". (In fact, I believe the formula for coca-cola was leaked a number of years ago and printed in a major daily newspaper).
The US patent system is actually fairly well done for what it is. The problem is that there are so many patents that it's near impossible to verify if a product should be given a patent or not. Of course, there have been stupid things patented (the binary system for example) which would never hold up in court because they are considered too mainstream.
Basically, the idea is... you can patent anything you want, however it doesn't guarantee that your patent will be revoked in the future because the technology already existed and was considered common knowledge.
Jordan
-- Jordan Mendelson : http://jordy.wserv.com Web Services, Inc. : http://www.wserv.com
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