Hi Bill, (01)
If you know someone who can help out pro-bono, it would be much appreciated. (02)
The software was originally called NLS (oNLine System) and was written
by a software team at Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in Menlo Park,
CA, between 1962-1977. The software team within SRI was named
Augmentation Research Center (ARC). Some of the original members on the
team included: Douglas C. Engelbart, Bill English, Ed van de Viet,
Martin Hardy, Roger Bates, John Farbodough, Dave Evans, Don Andrews,
Jeff Rulifson, Bill Paxton, Steward Brand. (03)
In 1977, the software was renamed AUGMENT (or Augment, not sure of
official case of the name) and was sold off to a company named Tymshare.
The name of the software has stayed the same since then, even though the
copyright to the code has moved from company to company. Worked
continued on the project until 1989 or so, when it stopped completely. (04)
The copyright ownership is somewhat unclear, but most likely owned by
British Telecom (BT), although both Boeing and BT seem to be unsure
whether or not they have any ownership of the code. NLS/Augment was not
listed in the inventory of acquired assets on either side (as far as I
know). (05)
Known History of Copyright of NLS/Augment (06)
SRI 1962(?) - 1977 [sold NLS to Tymshare]
Tymshare 1977 - 1979 [spun off Tymnet]
Tymnet 1979 - 1984 [acquired by McDonell Douglas]
McDonnell Douglas 1984 - 1989 [sold Tymnet]
British Telecom 1989 - present?
MCI 1993 [acquired Tymnet from BT; did
Augment copyright go with it?] (07)
I do not have a list of any of the people who worked on Augment after
SRI (except Doug Engelbart, who stayed on the project until it closed
down in 1989). (08)
The Computer History Museum is in the process of tracking down the
actual copyright owner of the code and will hopefully obtain permission
from the owner soon to clear the way for this project. (09)
The bigger issue is if there could be any software patents. This is much
harder to track down, since it seems that it could have been applied for
by either one or more of the various companies, or by certain individuals. (010)
Of course, there would likely not be any patents prior to 1981 Diamond
v. Diehr, so it is unlikely that SRI or Tymshare patented anything. (011)
Since the work essentially stopped by 1989, it is most likely that if a
patent was obtained, it would have been done by Tymnet or McDonnell Douglas. (012)
It is possible although unlikely that someone applied for a patent after
1998 State Street Bank & Trust v. Signature Financial Group. I don't
think anyone at any of the companies seem to have remembered they owned
AUGMENT by this time, although I can't be sure of this. (013)
Coincidentally, there was a case in 2000 when BT sued Prodigy over a
patent that BT owned, in which they claimed covered the use of
hyperlinks (first invented by Engelbart in the mid-60s and used in NLS).
It was over patent #4,873,662. But I looked through it and don't believe
it was related to AUGMENT, just a coincidence. Relevant links to the case: (014)
http://slashdot.org/yro/00/06/19/1624214.shtmlhttp://slashdot.org/yro/00/06/19/1624214.shtml
http://slashdot.org/yro/02/08/22/2213208.shtml?tid=155
http://www.nysd.uscourts.gov/courtweb/pdf/D02NYSC/02-07733.PDF
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Telecom#BT.27s_.22Web_patent.22 (015)
There were some hardware patents, such as the one filed by Doug
Engelbart on the mouse itself (patent #3,541,541). I'm not worried about
those (it's expired anyway), but am only interested in any software patents. (016)
Other useful information about the NLS/Augment software that may be
helpful for background info for a patent search: (017)
* Papers by Doug Engelbart.
http://www.bootstrap.org/institute/bibliography.html (018)
* 1968 demo - many of the original concepts shown in a 90 minute demo.
http://sloan.stanford.edu/MouseSite/1968Demo.html (019)
* partial list of important innovations in NLS: hyperlinks, multiple
document views, versioning, collaborative authoring, mouse, chord
keyset, verb-object-modifier UI, shared screen conferencing.
http://www.idealliance.org/papers/dx_xml03/papers/05-00-00/05-00-00.html#s2 (020)
* Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Engelbart
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On-Line_System
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augmentation_Research_Center
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Rulifson (021)
* in the news and books.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.01/mouse.html
http://www.thocp.net/biographies/engelbart_douglas.html (022)
* books.
What the Dormouse said - John Markoff
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0670033820/002-7227105-3999253?v=glance (023)
Bootstrapping - Thierry Bardini
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0804738718/qid=1131314941/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/002-7227105-3999253?v=glance&s=books (024)
Thanks for the help! (025)
Jonathan (026)
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