!080994 The strange patent turns out to be PTO booboo Last week I posted a patent news item concerning a strange patent awarded to RAMBUS. I felt the patent was strange because it listed over 30,000 lines of Fortran source code, source code that had little relevance to the claims or the specification of the patent. Well, as it turns out, the source code has absolutely no relevance to the claims and specifications, because the source code belongs to another patent application. Somehow the Patent Office inserted source code from one patent into another. Someone from RAMBUS heard about my posting, and sent me a message to clarify their patent: >Greg: > The "strange" patent you refer to in your message "A weird >hardware/software (?) patent (?)" of August 1 is a patent of ours that >the patent office misprinted. The Fortran code has nothing at all to do >with the our application as you correctly surmised. > It is my understanding that the patent has now been reprinted >correctly, so if folks pay $3.00 to get a collectors item, I think >they will be disappointed! > >Allen Roberts >Vice President Engineering >Rambus Inc. Just goes to show that even after being awarded a patent, you should pay careful attention to all of the paperwork. Greg Aharonian Internet Patent News Service