Re: [Fsfe-uk] Govt: WiFi does not now infringe Bromcom patent

[Ian Lynch]

On Tue, 2004-07-20 at 23:35, James Heald wrote:
> The Government has issued new guidance on the Bromcom patent.
> 
> Although claim 7 of the patent was upheld (regarding use of Bromcom's 
> wireless protocol), the Government is advising that WiFi does not 
> infringe, regardless of the software package.

Which basically wins the case because no-one in their right mind would
want to use BromCom's protocol to transfer administrative information
wirelessly in a school.

There is a free software application written in PHP running on Apache,
Linux and MySQL at www.dialsolutions.com/register. Try User name Guest
and password sandwell. The only thing it lacks is data transfer to SIMS,
the monopoly admin package. I guess now the patent is out the way quite
a number of applications for this will spring up. Patents encouraging
innovation? I don't think so.

Regards,
-- 
Ian Lynch <address@hidden>
ZMS Ltd