Lawyers for the Public Patent Foundation and the Software Freedom Law Center are scrutinizing a patent held by Microsoft for which, one lawyer told eWEEK.com, Microsoft failed to disclose prior work done by the Internet Engineering Task Force.
"This patent has been called to the attention of the free world, including the Public Patent Foundation," said Eben Moglen, a professor of law at Columbia University and a founding director of the Software Freedom Law Center, an organization that provides legal representation and other law-related services to protect and advance free and open-source software. "We are aware that the patent should not have issued in view of the prior art available to the patent office but not cited by Microsoft in its application," Moglen said.
The patent in question, USP 6101499, filed in 1998 and issued in 2000, concerns automatic generation of IP addresses to facilitate simple network connections.
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