Re: ripped off by the evil empire

[Geoffrey Dutton <dutton@spatial-effects.com>]

At 7:36 PM -0600 7/8/99, W. David Samuelsen wrote:
>Is this what shows up in www.expediamaps.com also (after entering name
>of town and start search)? Expediamaps.com is owned by Microsoft too.

As the content of expedia seems to derive from encarta, I assume that the
underlying access mechanism is similar; there is no way to see it in action
because there is no real-time pan or zoom to show how detail builds up.

This touches on another aspect of the patent that may be bogus, their
claims that interrupt-driven layer-by-layer buildup of graphic images on a
monitor is their invention; most of the claims describe this process, which
I have seen used in other products (including a CD-ROM atlas) for a long
time now.

Thus my previous question; can portions of a patent (i.e., specific claims,
I presume) be invalidated, or if any portion is deemed invalid must the
inventor reformulate and reapply for a new patent? In the current case, if
it can be shown that the interrupt-driven graphics claims duplicate prior
art, this would wipe out 80% or more of the content, and most of what would
remain is the part that was derived from my work.

In fact, there are a number of researchers that used my model or closely
related ones and published before 1996. We all should be irritated. And
there are probably hundreds of programmers who built interrupt-driven
graphic systems since the mid-80's some of who might challenge those claims.

Could this be the beginning of a movement?

-Geoff Dutton