[OT] Microsoft filled patent applications for scoped and immutable types

["Jérôme M. Berger" via Digitalmars-d]

Walter Bright wrote:
> On 8/28/2014 2:53 AM, "Jérôme M. Berger" wrote:
>> 	I should have said that in D it is used when declaring an instance
>> (i.e. at the place of the instance declaration) whereas in the
>> patent it is used when declaring the type. For a patent lawyer, this
>> will be enough to say that the patent is new.
> 
> Um,
> 
>     alias immutable(char)[] string;
> 
> is declaring a type. It is not used in this case as a storage class, and there 
> is no instance being declared. String is indeed a type.
> 
> 
>> 	Aliases are not really prior art either since they do not allow
>> creating an immutable type without also creating the corresponding
>> mutable type.
> 
> This seems to me to be reductio ad absurdum.

	Yes it is, but that's lawyers for you. I've had a lawyer arguing
that an article does not constitute prior art for a patent because
the article is about a submodule in a video *encoder* whereas the
patent is about a submodule in a video *decoder*, and that even
though most of the patent is a verbatim copy of the article text...

> And how does the patent say an 
> immutable T is to be created without saying T anywhere?
> 
	That is the point, you don't create an "immutable T", you create an
"immutable class ..." without ever naming the class.

		Jerome