Re: Pre-emptive multithreading covered by patents?

["B.M. Cook" <barry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> See http://www.wired.com/news/news/business/story/10251.html
> http://www.patents.ibm.com/details?patent_number=5694604
> http://www.patents.ibm.com/details?patent_number=5694603
> 
> Apparently, some ex-IBM guys are suing Microsoft to try to get rich
> quick. Oops, how cynical. I mean: to try to prove their invention was
> infringed by every MS Office product.

Having looked at the summary pages on these I can't imagine the Microsoft
lawyers will have to work too hard to overturn them.

The original application was from 1982, claiming re-scheduling in response
to a periodic clock (or keyboard interrupt).  The second programming job I
had, in the summer of 1977, had me writing a communication program that ran
650 times a second to handle a 4800 baud line (those were the days!).  I
certainly didn't invent the technique, and I always believed it was a
well-known way to do two or more things.

The only real feature he seems to be claiming is threads of the same program,
rather than switching between different programs - but his example is of a
compiler and a text editor.  Plenty of room for the lawyers to argue over
the definition of single/different programs.

	  Barry.