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Baker and all,
*** This is NOT an erroneous old message and hence should be posted to the
Reliable Computing list ***
A letter such as the one mentioned alone, if it exists, can hardly be called a
solution. For one, it covers only a very limited aspect of SUN's claims of
having invented some of the most fundamental interval operations.
But furthermore, there are now various other "owners" of "rights", and SUN may
not have the legal power to make decisions on what was originally "their"
interval "inventions". For example, a few years back SUN sold the rights to
use all their patents to Microsoft in bulk for in the order of $1.5 Million
per patent. One could imagine that MS would want to limit any interference
with their ~$35 M investment in intervals. The same may even apply to the
"inventors" because such action may interfere with "their" royalty share,
which in industry practice often amounts to 10-20% of proceeds from sales. Now
SUN is in the process of being taken over by Oracle, further spreading
"ownership" of interval rights to entities that have little connection or
expected inherent benevolence to the interval community.
What is needed is somebody at SUN who has a minimum amount of decency, common
sense, and understanding of intervals, who looks at the obvious evidence and
concludes that these claims are unfounded and thus works towards withdrawal of
the patents and revocation of associated claims. But considering the large
amounts of money involved, the complex "ownership", the elapsed time, an
industry tendency to embrace more and more complex legal shenanigans - and in
my personal opinion most unfortunately, the apparently small relative weight
of decency and scientific integrity in the entire situation - common sense may
not have a chance to prevail.
Best regards,
Martin Berz
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-reliable_computing@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:owner-reliable_computing@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
> Behalf Of R. Baker Kearfott
> Sent: Tuesday, September 22, 2009 13:11
> To: interval
> Subject: Re: [Reliable Computing] reliable_computing bug:
> Old, resolved emails still being posted
>
> Arnold,
>
> To my knowledge, Sun submitted an official Letter of
> Assurance to IEEE regarding its patents and the standard.
> (At least David Hough said they were going to do that.)
>
> Baker
>
> Arnold Neumaier wrote:
> > Ralph Baker Kearfott wrote:
> >>
> >> Please accept my apologies, since old emails from 2005, that have
> >> previously been posted, seem to be periodically posted
> again. This
> >> is especially disturbing since some of these are concerned
> with very
> >> controversial issues that have been, in effect, resolved
> since then.
> >
> > Hmmm. How were they resolved?
> >
> > Apparently only by weaving a veil of silence over it.
> > Or was there a more substantial solution?
> >
> > Did Sun etc. say they won't use the patents against the use of
> > interval methods in the public domain?
> >
> >
> > I am really curious.
> >
> >
> > Arnold Neumaier
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
> R. Baker Kearfott, rbk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (337) 482-5346 (fax)
> (337) 482-5270 (work) (337) 993-1827 (home)
> URL: http://interval.louisiana.edu/kearfott.html
> Department of Mathematics, University of Louisiana at
> Lafayette (Room 217 Maxim D. Doucet Hall, 1403 Johnston
> Street) Box 4-1010, Lafayette, LA 70504-1010, USA
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
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