[ECOS] OT: Unmining a patent through ecos

[Philippe Fremy <phil at freehackers dot org>]

	Hi,

I am one of the developer of an open-source operating system for contactless 
smart cards: (see www.jayacard.org). This is not directly ecos related but 
I hope you can still help me.

We have a minor problem in our project because a company working in the 
smart card field has a patent on communication between multi-application. 
Right now, we have found way to circumvent part of the patent, but I would 
be relieved if I could proove some "prior art" for the patent, making it 
useless.

The patent that is problematic to us is:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6256690.WKU.&OS=PN/6256690&RS=PN/6256690

Basically, they claim to patent message passing between two "applications" 
using a reserved memory area and a flag. Do you have anything similar in 
eCos or do you know where I could find public proof that this idea has been 
used before the patent ? Would be nice if such prior evidence is found on 
some embedded hardware.

	thanks in advance,

	Philippe Fremy

-- 
Tout mais pas l'indifférence, tous mais pas le temps qui meurt.
Et les jours qui se ressemblent, sans saveur et sans couleur.


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