> works fairly well. Here's a case I randomly ran across 20 years ago. Sun had recently patented a sequence of three assembly instructions. At the time I read

> works fairly well. Here's a case I randomly ran across 20 years ago. Sun had recently patented a sequence of three assembly instructions. At the time I read about it, I'd also been reading a 1987 paper that presented that same "invention", and not as a core result, but as an example in an appendix. It had been found by the author's superoptimizer, a kind of brute-force "AI" (to bring it back closer to this thread). Just to tighten the screws, the lawyer writing the patent put in this passage: > While embodiments and applications of this invention have been shown and described, it would be apparent to those skilled in the art that many more modifications than mentioned above are possible without departing from the inventive concepts herein. The invention, therefore, is not to be restricted except in the spirit of the appended claims. So they didn't just appropriate those three lines of old assembly, they made a grab at everything in its neighborhood. And it was granted. The only part of this that especially surprised me was the coincidence of having that paper fresh in memory just when this patent came up in some discussion online. (Source: https://darius.livejournal.com/8835.html https://darius.livejournal.com/8835.html)