Null terminator patent disclosure

[Craig Nelson]

egr at contact.uucp (Gordan Palameta) writes:



>     This method consists of using an aligned set of eight consecutive
>     zero bits to unambiguously mark the termination point of a text string
>     stored in a character array.

>     Please be advised that the "null terminator octet" method is
>     covered by US Patent 4 910401 granted to Lextech SA, and as
>     such may not be used without permission.


>     All software developed in the "C" programming language which
>     makes use of "null terminator octets", explicitly or implicitly
>     through standard "string-handling" library functions such as
>     "strcat", "strcpy", "strlen", is subject to royalty payments.

>     Lextech intends to vigorously enforce its legal rights in this
>     matter (retroactive to 1984).  Our royalty scheme is as follows:

>          Use of "null terminator octets" within source code

>          Each instance, up to 100                    $US 0.33
>          Each subsequent instance, up to 1000        $US 0.17
>          Each subsequent instance, without limit     $US 0.08

>     Please note that this fee is applicable to each distributed copy
>     of a program.

	For those who are willing to put up with this crap, I have a
suggestion.  Declare all your strings one extra byte long and rewrite
your strXXX functions to look for two (2) "8 bit 0" bytes.  Then lets
all write a letter to Lex and tell them where they can stick the extra
byte.

	Craig (mwizard at eecs.ee.pdx.edu)