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From: tzs@stein.u.washington.edu (Tim Smith)
Subject: Re: Patents:  What they are.  What they aren't.  Other factors.
Message-ID: <1992Oct14.033523.13036@u.washington.edu>
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Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
References: <1992Oct11.043358.5543@netcom.com> <id.6S0U.TRE@ferranti.com> <1992Oct13.055638.23596@netcom.com>
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1992 03:35:23 GMT
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peter@ferranti.com (peter da silva) writes:
>They haven't just harmed individuals. For example, the Pike patent prevents
>people from building a window system that uses backing store in a certain
>way -- which happens to be the obvious and most effective way. This harms
>everyone who uses a computer system running a window system, since it forces
>them to use about twice as much RAM or a much faster CPU.

If Pike's backing store is what I'm guessing (storing off-screen images of
the parts of windows that are obscured by other windows), then if it's so
obvious, how come Apple, Commodore, Microsoft, and many others overlooked
this technique?  The 128K Mac was rather pressed for memory -- I would have
expected them to come up with any "obvious" methods to save RAM.

--Tim Smith