[Freeswitch-users] The brilliance of hyper-links

[Michael S Collins]

Sir,

You've gotten unnecessarily upset. A poor choice of words written in a  
bit of a hurry. You are exactly right about the reason *why* the  
patent is bogus. "Clever" was the wrong word here. It should have been  
"the oh so new, original, never-been-done-before, not even a hint of  
prior art, concept of the hyperlink."

No offense intended to the real originator(s) of the very useful  
hyperlink.

-MC

Sent from my iPhone

On Feb 6, 2010, at 10:21 AM, Steve Underwood <steveu at coppice.org> wrote:

> I would like to strongly object to a story posted on the front page at
> www.freeswitch.org, about patent reexamination. Its the kind of thing
> that gets proponents of patent reform a bad name. It says "Did you  
> know
> that someone actually got a patent on the oh-so-clever concept of the
> hyperlink
> <http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=4,873,662.PN.&OS=PN/4,873,662&RS=PN/4,873,662 
> >?
> Enough said.". If you can't see the brilliance of the hyperlink you  
> must
> be a fool. When Doug Engelbart demostrated that concept in 1968 it was
> so brilliant it went over the heads of most of the audience, some of
> them making dumb remarks that entirely missed the point. That's pretty
> much conclusive proof that it was not something obvious to  
> practitioners
> in the art.
>
> The patent on hyperlinks was not bad because the idea was obvious. It
> was bad because it was applied for in 1980, 12 years after the concept
> was demonstrated. Luckily, video exists of the 1968 demo, and the  
> patent
> was shot down.
>
> If you can't get your act together about where real innovation lies,
> just shut up. It just makes arguing a meaningful case for a better
> patent system hard for the rest of us.
>
> Steve
>
>
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