OT: patenting an old year/date concept, to make millions - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

12 Nov 1999

...
 OK, that just how the date was entered, not how it was
stored internally, 
but it's not that different. I would claim this is certainly 'prior art'. 
And I doubt if this is the first time it was done either. 
Just because it was done before doesn't mean that a patent won't
be granted, especially when it comes to patenting algorithms.  Witness
the discussions in comp.arch earlier this year about IBM patenting
a well-known (has been in textbooks since the 1960's) algorithm for
converting multi-digit decimal numbers to binary.

Tim.