posted 29 March 2001 12:47            

What I found, among the numerous patents cited was a regurgitation of the same body material with variations in the patent title.

I find it alarming that they can so broadly claim ownership of what appears to be a system for applying random variations on patterns of Midi notes and controllers.

The Kyma workstation offers similar capabilities to anyone who chooses to program little snippets of Smalltalk code in the sequencer modules.

I guess they got the patents because,

1. Nobody else ever claimed to own these ideas, and

2. The US Patent Office has been inundated lately with bogus claims and they don't have the manpower to do a respectable job of filtering.

The net result is that they seem to be granting patents to anyone coming forth, with the idea being to let the courts sort it all out later...

I first became alarmed at this trend more than a decade ago when Boeing patented the algorithm for planting bushes in the scenery of flight simulators, using fractal generators. I am a scientist, and though I appreciate the need to fund these ideas, it rubs me the wrong way to claim ownership of mathematics.

... just my 2c