Microsoft Patents 'IsNot'

[Lenard Lindstrom]

Piet van Oostrum <piet at cs.uu.nl> writes:

> >>>>> Lenard Lindstrom <len-1 at telus.net> (LL) wrote:
> 
> 
> LL> I would hope that a rewrite of Claim-2 of the patent is required before
> LL> the patent is accept (if it is not outright rejected). Claim-2 is too
> LL> vague to be meaningful. Proper definitions of "BASIC" and "derived" are
> LL> missing. I imaging the patent is intended to protect Visual Basic.NET
> LL> rather than restrict unrelated languages like Delphi and Python
> LL> anyways.
> 
> If it would be applied to Python there would be enough prior art anyway.

It is not whether or not Python has prior art but rather what the cost
would be to defend a patent infringement lawsuit. But honestly, I believe
that is a remote possibility.

> And they forgot to put the word 'invention' between quotes.
> How stupid can they become?

I do not know what the proper form of a US patent application should be.
But on my first read of this claim I did find a typo in part 12 of the
FIELD OF THE INVENTION section. So this application was not carefully
proofread. It needs at least one revision.

Besides, many other assertions are plainly wrong. The constructs in parts
3-5 of the above section are not Basic. They are Microsoft's own additions
to the language. And to the claim Basic hid pointer arithmetic (part-2)
remember PEEK and POKE.

No, the scope of this patent will have to be narrowed to VISUAL BASIC-derived
languages, which is a very narrow scope indeed.

Lenard Lindstrom
<len-l at telus.net>