Omniweb-l Posting

[Pete Schreiber]

Dear OmniWeb List Members:

 

Please excuse any interruption that this email may cause you. I am
hoping that maybe one of the longstanding NeXT Computer developers on
this list serve could assist me. My client has been sued by Disc Link, a
subsidiary of Acacia Technologies, for patent infringement over the
right to essentially hyperlink (via a pre-programmed "static linkage
reference") out of a CD-ROM deliverable, go over a network to a remote
computer, and return a secondary set of information to the local
computer. I am doing the prior art patent research in an effort to
invalidate this software patent which was filed on July 27, 1994. I
think the NeXT developer community could help defeat this software
patent because the NeXT computer and NeXTSTEP OS were 10 years ahead of
its time. 

 

I am looking for tangible examples of CD-ROMs, most likely burned in the
1986-1994 time period, that evidence some type of pre-programmed, static
linkage reference (e.g., URL, URI, etc.) to a remote computer. I am
thinking of the following types of tangible examples:

 

*         A copy of T B-L's original WWW, Nexus, or libwww browser
burned to a CD-ROM on or before July 27, 1994 that would contain
pre-programmed Bookmarks; 

*         A copy of any other early browsers (e.g., Emacs, NetSurfer,
SpiderWoman, OmniWeb 0.5 <Beta release April 1994>, GOPHER, etc.) burned
to a CD-ROM on or before July 27, 1994 that would contain pre-programmed
Bookmarks;

*         A copy of a dev utilities and freeware CD-ROM called
"Electronic Appwrapper" from Paget Press (1992-1994) for NeXT developers
which may contain one or more of the above referenced browsers; 

*         Any type of digital user docs, help systems, Conference
Proceedings, etc. that were burned onto a CD-ROM on or before July 27,
1994;

*         Was a newsreader like NewsGrazer native to the NeXTSTEP OS and
would it have contained pre-programmed "Bookmarks" for the user to go to
known news sources in that era; or 

*         I am open to any other ideas that the NeXT/Apple developer
community may have.

 

Collectively, we have to work together to defeat bad software patents.
Thank you for your time and consideration of this request. If you want
to contact me via email <pschreiber> at my @esri.com address or point me
in the right direction that would be fine, or if you wanted to mail me a
copy of CD-ROM that was actually burned in the relevant time period then
I have provided my contact information below. Thanks.

 

Pete

 

Peter C. Schreiber | Managing Attorney 

Contracts and Legal Services Department

ESRI | 380 New York Street | Redlands, CA 92373 | USA

Phone: 909-793-2853 ext. 1176 | E-mail: pschreiber at esri.com
<mailto:y at esri.com>  

Fax: 909-307-3020 | www.esri.com <http://www.esri.com> 

 

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