Re: [VANILLA-LIST:3019] technical question

[Mats Olsson <matso@dtek.chalmers.se>]

> 
> Hi everyone.  
> 
> Please excuse my intrusion onto this list, but I think you are the people
> who can help me.  I'm trying to 
> invalidate a patent that was filed in February 1996 and claims technology
> that I think you guys were
> doing before that.  

    Not personally, no. But I've played since -92, I belive.

> The patent claims (claim 1 in the patent) a group message server

    That would be the netrek server.

>, a bunch of hosts connected to the 
> server through the internet, 

    ... the clients.

>the ability to form groups among the hosts, 

    ... the teams

> and the ability of a host
> in a group to send a message to the server, that the server then forwards
> out to everyone in the
> group.

    ... team board, all board, personal board. 

>Furthermore, the group message server must be able to aggregate
> messages, i.e. if
> the server receives a bunch of messages addressed to a group, it can
> concatenate them and
> send them out in a single packet.

    I assume you mean in a single packet to each recipient?

    [ someone more into the code correct me if I'm wrong here, please ]
    The way netrek works, each client has a representative on the server
host which periodically sends an update back to its client. That update 
contains all of the messages intended for the client since the last update, 
so multiple messages will be concatenated. 

> In order for Netrek or anything else to invalidate the patent, it must do
> all of the things described
> in the above paragraph.

    Yea, should. 

>I think that maintaining state information which is modified by messages
> to the group server from hosts in the group and periodically broadcasting
> state information
> to the group would probably qualify.

    Take the easy way out and use the minor, trivial part of netrek that 
handles messages instead. Will show just what a trivial, minor and obvious
patent *RANT* *RANT* *RANT* .... sorry about that. Just wished to convey
my impression of the US patent system. I wouldn't mind it so much, being
a Swede and all, but the way the US leans on EC to conform to US IP laws
means that the idiocy will probably spread over here as well.

    (I would need fsg's talent to describe my true feelings about it).

> My basic question is: does Netrek do all of this stuff and how can I prove
> it?  More specifically,
> how can I prove it did this stuff before 1995?  (Source code, design
> documents, user documents, etc.)
> Is there an archive of such things anywhere?

    Considering that the last major changes to these parts of netrek was 
around -93, that shouldn't be a problem. The source code contains 
timestamps (the message handling stuff was rewritten in 92, for example).
Authors can probably be found, as well.

    /Mats