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Message-ID: <0b3101c259bb$df4458f0$1125a8c0@wednesday>
From: "jdow" <jdow@earthlink.net>
To: "Davide Libenzi" <davidel@xmailserver.org>
Cc: "Xuan Baldauf" <xuan--lkml@baldauf.org>,
       "Linux Kernel Mailing List" <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0209111011330.1576-100000@blue1.dev.mcafeelabs.com>
Subject: Re: Heuristic readahead for filesystems
Date: Wed, 11 Sep 2002 10:51:35 -0700
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From: "Davide Libenzi" <davidel@xmailserver.org>

> On Wed, 11 Sep 2002, jdow wrote:
>
> > Davide, when was the patent on readahead taken out? It has either
expired
> > or I can prove prior art I did myself on the old StarDrive and HardFrame
> > controllers for the Amiga made by Microbotics, Inc.
>
> I'm definitely not a patent attorney :) but since there's the tendency to
> patent almost everything in big corporations ( my Co. gives $ 2K for each
> patent filed, plus another $ 1K if it's approved ) I bet that there's a
> patent pending somewhere about this. Even if someone have prior art about
> hw prefecting, imho there's the possibility to patent a software ( kernel
> ) based version of the art. I also do not think M$ to be so dumb to adopt
> a technique that is described inside a someone else owned patent in US.
> But again, i'm not a patent attorney ...

This was kernel software. It was committed in the mid 80s. (Hm, so a patent
MIGHT not be expired by a year or two.) The predecessor device was used to
overturn a patent a company claimed on parallel port to SCSI converters. The
Microbotics units were rather forward looking for their day.

{^_^}    Joanne Dow, jdow@earthlink.net


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