> That was a waste of your time and money. Publication of those > inventions by you, at zero cost to you and others, would have > been sufficient to prevent someone else from trying to patent > them. Next time, get good advice from a patent lawyer on how > to achieve your goals without paying for a patent. Perhaps he did consult a lawyer and learned that by patenting them he now has the ability to sue any non-licenced implementors in court, and can take away a share of any earnings that they made with their non-licenced implementation. That is not possible merely by publishing first. Law is every bit as complex as network protocols or application programming. It is better to consult with an expert in the field before making assumptions. I am not a lawyer. --Michael Dillon _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf