From...

by Christine McGeever

(IDG) -- Fortune 500 companies and software manufacturers using a popular Y2K date-correction method will have to pony up licensing fees if the man who claims to have invented the technique has his way.

The technique, known as windowing, has been applied to Y2K issues for more than a decade. A patent was issued more than a year ago and the vast majority of commercial software today has already implemented windowing. Now Bruce Dickens believes the time is right for him to reap profits as the inventor.

Analysts, though, believe that companies choosing to fight Dickens won't end up having to pay any fees.

Dickens was an employee in 1996 at McDonnell Douglas Corp. in Long Beach, Calif., when the company filed for a windowing patent. Patent number 5,806,063 was awarded to McDonnell Douglas in September 1998, and the company assigned the patent to Dickens. Since then, Dickens started a company called Dickens2000 to solicit licensees for the windowing technique, which he has dubbed the Dickens Y2K Solution.

Dickens has retained attorneys from Laguna Beach, Calif., law firm Levin & Hawes to aid him. According to an announcement issued Thursday by Levin & Hawes' Bill Cray, the law firm will issue letters to Fortune 500 companies "offering a license." Companies that execute a license "will obtain the benefit of an exceptionally modest up-front fee and ongoing royalty rate." Companies that respond after Jan. 1 will be charged royalties "one hundred times higher" than those who sign up by Dec. 31.

Kazim Isfahani at Giga Information Group Inc. in Cambridge, Mass., speculated that Dickens could pursue $50,000 to $100,000 in fees from companies large enough to consider such a sum "a nuisance fee." Neither Dickens nor his counsel would comment on the exact amount companies would pay for licensing.

Companies are likely to fight the request to pay licensing fees, analysts said. "This one will be challenged," said Leon Kappelman, associate professor of business computer systems at the University of North Texas. Obtaining a patent is one thing, he added, but having it acknowledged as valid is another. "The technique is very old, and there's nothing novel in the technology described in the patent filing," he said.

Windowing is reportedly the most popular of several software techniques for accurately interpreting data entered in double-digit year fields. Isfahani estimated that windowing has been used in 90 percent of companies implementing a Y2K software fix.

Among commercial software applications, about 80 percent, including Microsoft Office and Intuit Quicken, implemented the technique as early as 1995, according to Kappelman.