At 11:51 PM 3/2/98 +1000, you wrote:
>On Mon, Mar 02, 1998 at 08:24:42AM -0500, Tom Mariner wrote:
>> In fact, IBM copyrighted the term "byte" which is one of the reasons that
>
>Perhaps you mean trademarked - a single word cannot be copyrighted since it
> doesn't
>constitute a "work" under copyright law. In any case this surprises me - do you
>have any references to substantiate this?
>

The way I heard it, (at a comms seminar in early 80's I think) was that the ISO
standards committee, being comprised of computer manufacturers who didn't want
to be dominated by IBM (remember the seven dwarves). Opted for OCTET rather
than the IBM terminology 'byte'. I doubt that 'byte' was ever copyrighted or
trademarked, but it was certainly industry perception that 'byte' was IBM
terminology. The seven dwarves wanted none of that. :-)

Ray Gardiner, ray@netspace.net.au