> >
> > I do anyway...! Seriously, tho, how can anyone patent the use of
> > PAUP, which is in itself copyrighted?
>>> If they have a patent on the use of cladistic analysis in general, I
> suppose that this includes all possible ways of doing cladistic analysis,
> and it doesn't matter with which software you would do it. In practice
> this means that if you use PAUP, HENNIG, PHYLIP, or even a self-written
> software package that performs cladistic analysis, you violate their
> patent.
>>>> Bart Nelissen
>> Dr. Bart Nelissen | E-mail: nelissen at uia.ua.ac.be
and all the other messages with respect to the FINS patent
It'd be interesting to see what comes out of a legal battle of the PAUP
copyright vs the FINS patent. Aren't they themselves violating the PAUP
copyright somewhere? I'd put my money of Swofford and Co.
Apart from that, my personal feeling with regard to this idiotic patent
is to ignore it completely, after filing your complaint to the EEC of course
so they learn not to be so sloppy. If the whole scientific community does this
(as it undoubtedly will) the company that bought the patent will probably
decide not to alienate the same scientists that they would like to sell their
other products to (if they are smart, that is).
Finally, and I must confess I am not at all an expert in patent matters,
is that I thought that a patent had to be novel, non-obvious and a
distinct improvement over previous methods and that it has to be a thing,
or a production method (you can't patent knowledge) and as far as I can
tell, this one scores zeroes all round. So it may not even stand up in
court as a proper patent.
J.R. de Miranda
UCR, Costa Rica
