Re: Corpora: US company claims patent

John Hutchins (J.Hutchins@uea.ac.uk)
Wed, 15 Oct 1997 09:18:45 BST

In a book I published in 1986 on the history of MT ("Machine
translation: past, present, future" Ellis Horwood/Halstead
Press), there will be found numerous examples of proposed
and implemented interlingua-based MT systems. Warren Weaver
in 1949 (as Pierre Isablelle points out) was the first to
suggest the use of an interlingua in the context of
computer-based (or -aided) translation; Bar-Hillel in 1951
was the first to give more specific proposals. (As others
have pointed out, the idea of a 'universal language' itself
goes back to the 17th century and even earlier.)

To be legitimate a US patent would have to demonstrate the
'invention' of a procedure not previously used or described.
The status of US patents differs from those in Europe and
elsewhere -- it may be that the significance of this claim
is not as great as the discussion of this list implies. But
a US patent lawyer is needed!

John Hutchins
15 October 1997
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