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From: MRC@SIMTEL20.ARPA (Mark Crispin)
Newsgroups: net.micro.atari
Subject: Re: DRI agrees to change GEM
Message-ID: <12148757255.8.MRC@SIMTEL20.ARPA>
Date: Sat, 5-Oct-85 15:56:45 EDT
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Posted: Sat Oct  5 15:56:45 1985
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It is easy to put in patents and copyrights which are complete bullsh-t.
They are "valid" as long as nobody contests it.  DEC still claims a patent
on the PDP-10 byte instructions even though they'd lose a real court fight
on it (and have failed to sue Xerox, Foonly, Tymshare, and Systems Concepts
for building imitation PDP-10's).

There is a difference between a patent and a copyright.  What Apple apparently
has is a patent, since a copyright would not prevent anybody from recreating
from scratch software with the same functionality (consider the GNU effort).
I seriously doubt the patent would hold up against a worthy opponent.  DRI
probably caved in because they want Apple as a customer.

Face it, Apple, Commodore, and Atari are glorified toy companies and behave
just like toy companies, not like vendors of professional equipment.  Not a
single idea on the Mac is original with Apple.
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