Jeff Read <bitwize at snet.net> wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 10, 2003 at 09:50:56AM -0500, Doug Mair wrote:
> > Interesting article.  Talks about the history and the current state of
> > programming.  I'd never heard of Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) before
> > this article.  The article definitely talks about some of the issues of
> > multiple inheritance.
> 
> Aspect-oriented programming has one fatal flaw that puts a crimp in its widespread availability: It's patented.
> 
> http://www.isr.uci.edu/~lopes/patents.html
> 
> -- 
> Jeffrey T. Read
> "I fight not for me but the blind babe Justice!" --Galford

U.S. patent 6473895 -  "Aspect-Oriented System Monitoring and Tracing"
Publication date:  2002-10-29

An aspect oriented system for implementing system monitoring and tracing
is provided in which the monitoring and tracing functionality needs not
be coded into the resources being monitored or traced. Rather, an aspect
is provided which encapsulates the monitoring/tracing behavior. This
behavior may easily and transparently be forced onto the resource by
compiling the object class for the resource along with the
monitoring/tracing aspect. When the monitoring/tracing is no longer
needed, it is removed simply by recompiling the resource object classes
without the aspect

http://l2.espacenet.com/espacenet/viewer?PN=US6473895&CY=ep&LG=en&DB=EPD

For the other patent which is not pending the screen at the European
Patent Office
http://ep.espacenet.com/
gives no answer by searching for publication no. US6467086 although it
claims to search world-wide.


These patents are probably of the sort which could be contested.
Currently the US patent office
allows a lot of software patents without checking too much for prior art

and the European Patent Office recently began as well with this
practice.

-- Hannes