From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: dmr@plan9.bell-labs.com (Dennis Ritchie)
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 22:22:56 -0400
Subject: [TUHS] Re: SCO vs IBM: what unix patents?
Message-ID: <b7f6a9f71b5f4eae2283b74f108d54fb@plan9.bell-labs.com>

Arnold asked,

 > Just out of curiousity, what patents are there in the current Unix System V
 > system?  The setuid patent was released to the public, so that can't be
 > an issue.  And copyright, trade secrets, blah blah, I can understand.  But
 > I'm curious what is there in System V that has actually been patented?

One article I read mentioned three, all visible in the
USPTO database:

	5,652,854 (filed 1995, granted 1997, assigned to Novell)
	5,265,250 (filed 1990, granted 1993, originally assigned to AT&T)
	6,097,384 (filed 1995, granted 2000, assigned to Novell)

The first has to do with page table mapping
and virtual address space, the second with RPC,
the third with managing memory in subobjects.

I have no idea how central these are to the
case.  They appear rather peripheral to me.

	Dennis