Re: CBM patent #Des. 277857

From: Mark (mark_k_at_iname.com)
Date: 1998-03-18 19:31:52

On 18-Mar-98, Olaf Seibert wrote:
> Have a look at IBM's patent server, www.patents.ibm.com, and look up
> patent number Des. 277857.  Apparently CBM has a patent on the looks of
> the CBM-500/600/700 and PET 8xxx-SK machines...

This is not too surprising; many other companies have design patents on the
look of their products.

It can be quite interesting to look through these, as often the illustrations
in the patent are of an earlier design, which was modified before the product
was actually released, or the product was never released at all. (For example
one of Nintendo's design patents is an early version of the Super Famicom, and
another is of four alternative Game Boy designs.)



> More of Commodore's patents can be found by doing an advanced search
> for "Commodore" in the Assignee field.

Searching on Commodore Electronics would probably return less "bogus" results
(i.e., patents assigned to unrelated companies which happen to have the word
Commodore in their names). But this may exclude some relevant patents too, like
those which may be assigned to Commodore-Amiga.



> I was really looking for the patent Commodore allegedly held on something
> to do with backing store in window systems, but I found this first.

I believe one of their patents covers the menuing concept used by Intuition
(part of Amiga ROM kernel).


-- Mark

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