[sdiy] Flash Drive with Floppy Interface?

[Magnus Danielson]

From: "Paul Perry" <pfperry at melbpc.org.au>
Subject: RE: Re: [sdiy] Flash Drive with Floppy Interface?
Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2007 09:07:18 +1000
Message-ID: <002801c7a6fd$1950a240$8501a8c0 at ice9>

> This is a myth.
> 
> But in any case I'm sure there is a ton of prior art
> represented by ruggidized computers from years ago.

Intel thought they had a patent on re-loadable microcode. They sued UMC
for including it in their processors. They should not have done that.
The prior art was published in an awarded paper in 1975 by DataSAAB engineer
Harold Lawson that had that feature in their D23 machine introduced in 1972.
The Intel patent was from 1978, so the paper was certainly prior art and UMC
had been using it. Intel droped their charges. I beleive I have read that UMC
even had Lawson come to court as a witness, but I can't find a reference to it.
UMC argued that Intel should not have been given the patent in the first place.

The DataSAAB machines was to much amusement, hear it play:
http://www.ctrl-c.liu.se/misc/datasaab/musik-eng.html

This is how happy you are when working with a DataSAAB machine:
http://www.ctrl-c.liu.se/misc/datasaab/operatriser.jpg
(Yes, that's Swedish girls!!!)

Finally, I'd like to point out that different countries have different
philosofy in how patents is granted. Some countries have very strict
investigations and fairly indepth research. Some countries make some
investigations but assumes that a patent which is not worthy will be challenged
in court eventually or just droped. Some countries is even worse out and you
basically pay a stamping fee. Some countries have a "smoother" path for patent
applications from their own country than from abroad, but few will confess to
it (for obvious reasons). When a patent application hits the EC patent office
in Münich, they look at the original country and depending on which country it
is, their work effort varies depending on how well the originating patent
country do their investigations. Some countries have so thorrow investigations
that they can more or less reach conclusion with that as basis and a small
search where as for other countries they have to do the process from scratch.
So the quality of the patent approval process varies and so do the means to
overrule them. I'm not saying that one or the other is the best, but personally
I preferr a good investigation of the patent approvability. Having also had my
bit of figth with those approving foreign patents I think I have some
experience, but not always in their favour I might say. Some referred patents
was fairly clearly not in a related field.

Cheers,
Magnus