Re: Can one still use LUA in printer machines? (Patent question)

["Thomas Harning Jr." <harningt@...>]

On Mon, Dec 12, 2016 at 12:02 PM, Enrico Colombini <erix@erix.it> wrote:
> On 12-Dec-16 16:52, Javier Guerra Giraldez wrote:
>>
>> how is this different from the use of PostScript? it is a programming
>> language that interacts with the printer's firmware and modifies its
>> behaviour.
>
>
> Many years ago a firm I knew got sued by a competitor for their use of
> RS-232 to connect a textile machine to a computer. The competitor had
> patented it (just the use of RS-232 for that type of machine, not the
> protocol) and won. They were not very happy about it.
>
Sounds like someone needs to develop a permissive open-source license
for which the main change is that it explicitly disallows the use of
it in a patent.

Ex: MIT + can't be mentioned in patent clause

Sure this would change the patent to "label printer using Lua" to
"label printer using scripting language"... but at least that should
be generic enough to be thrown out, or at least more easily fought
using prior art (ex: post-script on printer).


-- 
Thomas Harning Jr. (http://about.me/harningt)