Re: [Fsfe-uk] Bromcom undead ?

[Ian Lynch]

On Tue, 2004-11-30 at 10:02, Ralph Janke wrote:
> Ian Lynch wrote:
> 
> >Quite so. Any fair minded person would see that transferring
> >registration data over wireless when it was previously done over cable
> >is no different from any data that was on cable then being transferred
> >over wireless so what is unusual or inventive about it?
> >
> >  
> >
> That would be found true today, I suppose. However, the judge decided in 
> the year when
> Bromcom "invented" and patented it, it was a knowledge only a radio 
> technology expert would have had,
> but not somebody employed by a school running a computer network and 
> deploying a registration system.

er, I had the knowledge when I was employed in a school running a cable
network in 1988. Since no-one asked me the question when I was on the
witness stand, how does the judge know? I have a degree in physics so
its perfectly reasonable that I would know about the possibilities of
transmitting data over wireless. The main reason not to in 1988 was
mainly cost and the fact it didn't give sufficient advantage at the time
to justify the additional cost. I bet there were other physics teachers
out there that would have known the principles.

> I disagree with that statement, since not only radio specialists would 
> have known it, I had at that time
> a Masetrs Degree in Computer Science and was lecturing this protocol in 
> undergrad and graduate courses
> at University. I have never been a radio specialist and would have still 
> deployed a system in such a way.

Exactly so maybe this should be appealed?

> Therefore, I would despute the novelty or non-obvious assessment of the 
> judge. However because of legal reasons, I
> believe nothing can be done in that way. What we could do is offer our 
> help to schools in danger in working out
> the differences of claim 7 to their wireless network in order to give 
> them a defense against the patent, because the
> specific parts of claim 7 are not equal to the deployed network in the 
> particular school.

Surely the DfES would be interested in setting up a test case to force
the issue.

-- 
Ian Lynch <address@hidden>
ZMS Ltd