Privacy, Business and Law

In the late 1960s when IBM’s internal policy was that software should not be patentable, IBM vice president, J. W. Birkenstock, chaired a presidential commission on the patent system which recommended that software should not be patentable. We expect that the other commission members deferred to IBM’s expertise on software, just as members of a [...]

U.S. Patent 4,736,308, the first patent under the heading “Absurd Patents” in “Against Software Patents” is described: “For example, Apple was sued because the HyperCard program allegedly violates patent number 4,736,308 a patent that covers displaying portions of two or more strings together on the screen, effectively scrolling with multiple subwindows. Scrolling and subwindows are [...]