overloaded function handles

[John Swensen]

On Jul 27, 2009, at 10:54 AM, John W. Eaton wrote:

> On 27-Jul-2009, Robert T. Short wrote:
>
> | FYI.  The obviousness concept applies only to the granting of  
> patents.
> | The patents that Mathworks holds have been granted and it is now  
> up to
> | potential infringers to show that either the patent is really  
> invalid
> | because of obviousness or other reason or that the implementation  
> is not
> | infringing.
> |
> | Does someone have a copy of the patent in question?
>
> Search for US patent 6993772 here:
>
>  http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.htm
>
> Other US patents held by the MathWorks are listed here:
>
>  http://www.mathworks.com/company/aboutus/policies_statements/patents.html
>
> jwe

I think patent number 6,857,118 is the more applicable one: "Function  
values in computer programming languages having dynamic types and  
overloading."  That being said, I find it ridiculous that the ability  
to overload a function by string name is actually patentable.  There  
has got to be gobs of languages that did the same thing before this  
patent was issued, right?

John Swensen
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: https://www-old.cae.wisc.edu/pipermail/octave-maintainers/attachments/20090727/323d887b/attachment.html