Subject: attempted patent on identifier technology

From: Leslie Daigle <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 10:40:51 -0500 (EST)

Howdy,

For anyone who has been involved in Internet identifier work for any
period of time, U.S. Patent No. 5,764,906 should be of interest.  We've
recently been contacted by lawyers seeking prior (to 1995) art concerning
this patent, which claims as its invention:

	Specifically, this invention is
	a system for providing and maintaining short aliases for
	information resources and their providers and a system for
	translation of these aliases to meaningful electronic
	addresses such as URL's, facsimile and voice telephone
	numbers and electronic mail addresses, and for accessing the
	resources by means of these addresses.

Peter Deutsch has already dug through the old URI archives and forwarded
copious material to the lawyers (see e-mail addresses below), but if
anyone else in this community feels they have knowledge of other pre-existing
work, have a look at the full patent description (an UNOFFICIAL copy
of which can be found at http://www.bunyip.com/research/ietf/UERpatent.html)
and send your information to

	Tod Noah		[email-masked]
	Andy Johnston-Laird	[email-masked]

N.B.:  I'm just forwarding the information I have as a matter of 
community interest; I don't have any further information, so please contact
the lawyers directly if you have questions.

Leslie.

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    If cats had bumper stickers:                  Leslie Daigle
                                             
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