[Patents] Threats to developers

[Edward Avis epa98@doc.ic.ac.uk]

On Mon, 16 Oct 2000, PILCH Hartmut wrote:

>Individual programmers do shy away from patent threats and quite a
>few have been attacked.

I think Bruce Perens was threatened over his ElectricFence bounds
checking system for C programs by a company which obtained a patent
while he was still developing it.  Despite the fact that bounds checking
is not by any means a new idea.  Or perhaps the patent concerned bounds
checking not as such?

-- 
Ed Avis
epa98@doc.ic.ac.uk