He Says He Patented a Y2K Cure, but Big Companies Aren’t So Sure

Y2K fears have cooled, but the fight over who will profit from the software bug is still raging.

Take the case of Bruce Dickens, a 49-year-old Irvine programmer who holds a patent for software used in diagnosing and fixing possible glitches when 2000 arrived.

Dickens, who says he came up with the technique in 1995, was working at McDonnell Douglas at the time.

The solution in part relies on “windowing,” a programming technique that tricks the computer into thinking the century turn-over is decades away.

Dickens handed his discovery to McDonnell Douglas, which applied for--and finally received--a patent in 1998. But by then, the company had been acquired by Boeing Co., which agreed to sell the patent to Dickens in October for $10,000.

Hoping to recoup his costs and profit from the patent, Dickens began approaching Fortune 500 companies and asking for royalties.

Some companies have paid, said Dickens’ attorney, William Cray. He declined to name either the corporations or the amount Dickens had received.

Industry watchers say the companies, knowing that Dickens could be entitled to billions of dollars, began to question the validity of the patent.

Late last month, the Patent and Trademark Office began investigating whether it should have granted the patent in the first place. The decision to reassess the patent, say industry watchers, is rare.

“The mere fact that they’re doing this is indicative of their own uncertainty over the validity of the patent, but also of the external pressures [the office] was getting from companies,” said Kazim Isfahani, senior Y2K analyst for Giga Information Group, a technology research and consulting firm.

Patent commissioner Q. Todd Dickinson ordered the reexamination “after the discovery of information that was not considered when the patent was originally examined and granted,” according to a statement from the patent office.

The Y2K controversy is part of a stampede by high-tech players trying to push the boundaries on what can, and cannot, be patented. The means to enabling consumers to place online bids for airline tickets and other goods, for instance, has been patented by Priceline.com. The notion of paying consumers to view Internet ads has been locked up by Cybergold.

Officials at the patent office say the trend reflects a necessary evolution in intellectual property law. Business models and concepts are the drivers of the Internet Age, just like inventions and gadgets fueled the Industrial Age.

Dickens’ attorneys say they expect to file their comments in support of the patent to the patent office by next month.