Microsoft Patents 'IsNot'

[Lenard Lindstrom]

Paul Robson <autismuk at autismuk.muralichucks.freeserve.co.uk> writes:

> On Mon, 22 Nov 2004 23:53:37 +0000, Lenard Lindstrom wrote:
> 
> > No, Claim-2 refers to a "BASIC-derived programming language". Description 42
> > claims "BORLAND DELPHI" is such a "BASIC-like or BASIC-derived language". Now I
> > have not used Delphi but understand it is a kind of Pascal.
> 
> Delphi *is* Pascal - or Borland's variant of it anyway. 
> 
So Delphi is definitely not BASIC-derived. It is BASIC-like in that various
basic dialects, including QBasic, came to support the structured programming
that Pascal was designed from the beginning to teach.

> It's an extension of Object Pascal, which came in with Turbo Pascal 5.5
> and was (I think) designed by the guy responsible for the C# design,
> Andreas Heiljberg (?).
> 
Interesting. If this is true I wonder if Heiljberg knows someone in Microsoft
claims Object Pascal is modelled after Basic. Certainly the windowing extensions
made to VB and Delphi are not BASIC-like or BASIC-derived.

> I bought a copy of this in I reckon about 1986ish. Visual Basic debuted in
> 1991.

I would hope that a rewrite of Claim-2 of the patent is required before the patent
is accept (if it is not outright rejected). Claim-2 is too vague to be meaningful.
Proper definitions of "BASIC" and "derived" are missing. I imaging the patent is
intended to protect Visual Basic.NET rather than restrict unrelated languages
like Delphi and Python anyways.

Lenard Lindstrom
<len-l at telus.net>