On Tue, 02 May 2000, you wrote: > 5. Other stuff I'm sure we can come up with... any real practicing patent > attorneys out there?
As a matter of fact, yes. I'm a member of the Texas Bar (active status) and a registered patent attorney (Registration No. 36,765). Along with Texas and the PTO, I've been admitted to practice before the Southern District of Texas (5th Circuit) and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. I've got nine years of experience and specialize in software patents. Note, I'm predominantly a patent prosecutor, not a litigator. However, I have written dozens of infringement opinions and am currently involved in a patent litigation case for one of my clients. At first blush, I'd say there is no literal infringement after hearing how Debian handles it. (No, this does NOT consitute an opinion of counsel) However, you can't rule out infringement until competent counsel reviews the file history and can gauge the scope of the claims. Speaking of which, has anyone pulled the file wrapper from the PTO? We may not need to go to that trouble if M$ just sits on the patent. Has M$ threatened anyone? The patent issued last October. They've had at least six months to do something. If they had planned to do something with it, they would likely have filed a Petition to Make Special, which would be in the file wrapper. If they haven't, then we may have nothing to worry about (at least for now). M$ gets a lot of patents. They may well have simply added this one to the (large) pile and forgot about it. Don't panic folks. Ronald L. Chichester Frohwitter Intellectual Property Counselors Three Riverway, Suite 500 Houston, Texas 77056 713-621-0703 (voice) 713-622-1624 (facsimile) [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.frohwitter.com
