Re: Architectural implications of locate mode I/O and channels

MitchAlsup1 <mitchalsup@aol.com> schrieb:

Thomas Koenig wrote:
>

John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> schrieb:
>

IBM patented the 709's channel: US Patent 3,812,475 filed in 1957 but
not granted until 1974. The patent is 488 pages long including 409
pages of figures, 130 columns of narrative text, and 91 claims.
>
https://patents.google.com/patent/US3812475A/en

>
What a monster.
>
I've written long patents myself, but this one surely takes the
biscuit.

>
The amalgamation of the figures and the placement of the figures
via the figure placement "figure" enable one to directly implement
the device in logic.

That is, of course, very nice.

But the sheer number of claims, 91, with around than half of them
indpendent (but quite a few formulated as "in combination", so there
may have been some dependency to other claims hidden in there...
must have taken the competition quite some time to figure out
what was actually covered, and if their own designs fell under
that patent or not.

And then it was granted after ~ 20 years, and continued to be
valid for another ~ 20 - US patent law used to be weird.