Z:gnu-www-ja-software-patents--85483c-You will find patent office re/en

You will find patent office really think that there is something brilliant about doing more than one of anything. They don't realize that in computer science, that's the most obvious way to generalize anything. You did it once and now you can do it any number of times, you can make a subroutine. They think that if you do anything more than once, that somehow means you are brilliant and that nobody can possibly argue with you and that you have the right to boss them around. Anyway, he was not offered a license. He had to shut down. He couldn't even afford really to go to court. I would say that particular patent was an obvious idea. It is possible that a judge might have agreed, but we will never know because he could not afford to go to court.