I got in on the bonus as well. It was actually
on a simpler concept -- "tag an index with the
collation it represents".

It was filed in 1993 - and, in Dec 2002,
I got a piece of junk-USMail, offering to sell
me a plaque for "my new patent"! Yes, it sat
in the patent office for almost 10 years before being
granted.

Through some sort of legal shamanisms, it turned
into two patents - which, to my non-trained eye,
seem to be the "same thing in different words".

US Patents
6,507,813 System and method for national language support
6,496,793 System and methods for national language support with embedded
locale-specific language driver identifiers

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1
&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6,507,813.WKU.&OS=PN/6,507,813&RS=P
N/6,507,813

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1
&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6,496,793.WKU.&OS=PN/6,496,793&RS=P
N/6,496,793

Well, I bought the plaque, and it proudly hangs
in my at-work office - where it leads to interesting
conversations. I also looked up the "other guy"
(Dan Veditz - who used to work for me at Ashton-Tate
on dBase collations) - and we had a great lunch.
Smiling at the quirks of "software patents".

To me, the "invention" didn't pass the "obvious
to anyone skilled in the art" test -- but I realized
last week that my opinion in the matter doesn't count --
after all, "I invented it, so of course it was obvious
to me"... <grin>

99.99% of software patents are BS (RS in Aus.) generated by
lawyers.... and you can quote me on that. <grin>

Oh, and the patent was assigned to Borland when it
was filed (that was part of the "bonus" to file
a patent -- there was a 2nd part of the bonus given
when the patent was granted -- but you had to still
be with the company).

Dave Schnepper
(who's still lurking in this group....)

> ________________________________________________________________________
> ________________________________________________________________________
>
> Message: 15
> Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2005 16:34:16 -0500
> From: "Ann W. Harrison" <aharrison@...>
> Subject: Re: Patent Portfolio
>
> Aage Johansen wrote:
>
> >
> > Wasn't "right mouse-click and context menus" first used by Borland?
>
> The best of the Borland patents that I know of is the patent on the
> scheme for representing multi-level collations - which really irked Dave
> Schnepper because it came from a different group, some years after he'd
> used it in Firebird, and the other guy got a patent bonus.
>
> Cheers,
>
>
> Ann
>
>
>
> ________________________________________________________________________
> ________________________________________________________________________
>
> Message: 16
> Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2005 22:57:32 +0100
> From: "Ivan Prenosil" <Ivan.Prenosil@...>
> Subject: Re: Patent Portfolio
>
> "Ann W. Harrison" wrote:
> > Aage Johansen wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> Wasn't "right mouse-click and context menus" first used by Borland?
> >
> > The best of the Borland patents that I know of is the patent on the
> > scheme for representing multi-level collations - which really
> irked Dave
> > Schnepper because it came from a different group, some years after he'd
> > used it in Firebird, and the other guy got a patent bonus.
>
> Does it mean anything to Firebird ? E.g. can the Borland guy come
> and claim some fees from Firebird developers/users ?
>
> Ivan
>
>
>