Microsoft Patents 'IsNot'

[Steve Holden]

Terry Reedy wrote:

> "Skip Montanaro" <skip at pobox.com> wrote in message 
> news:16798.16559.745209.751967 at montanaro.dyndns.org...
> 
>>My guess is Microsoft hopes to discourage Visual Basic knock-offs.  Claim 
>>2
>>clearly seems to restrict the scope to BASIC.
> 
> 
> But Claim 1 is generic.  Not being an initiate into Patentese, I would not 
> be sure is Claim 2 is a restriction or an exemplification or a backup 
> claim.
> 
The normal method of applying for a patent starts with the most general 
claims and has subsequent claims restricting the scope successively. The 
argument then becomes how far down the list the patent examiner must go 
before seeing what he or she regards as a defensible claim.
> 
>>Seems pretty slimy.
> 
> 
Yep.

> To me, this confirms the depravity of software claims.
> 
Stupidity, I should have said.

> I think the Python Software Foundation should notify both the Patent Office 
> and the claimant lawyers of Python's prior art of an 'is not' operator with 
> the same meaning.  The necessity, for Basic, to delete the space or change 
> it to '_' (and both forms, with all variations of casing, are 'claimed' as 
> inventions) is because Microsoft Basic currently parses 'a Is Not b' as 'a 
> Is (Not b)' instead of 'a (Is Not) b' as Python does and coupled with a 
> proper reluctance to change the meaning of currently legal code.  But 
> changing ' ' to '_' for pragmatic reasons is standard in programming 
> languages, including Python.
> 
While I admire the sentiment, I can't really support the Foundation 
becoming involved in such nonsense.

regards
  Steve
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