Benoît Sibaud benoit.sibaud@wanadoo.fr writes:

"Niall Douglas" s_fsfeurope2@nedprod.com wrote:

...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/28/34148.html

Is this for real?

I *think* it's a joke. It's sad that one can't be sure, but a web search for "Dall Swanhuffer" turned up nothing, so I'd guess he's fictional. The claim to patent integers but not floating point numbers, and the "Federation Against Number Theft" also seem too dodgy even for the US.

I don't know, but at the digital era, every content IS a number (eg a CD is just a number with 650 millions of binary digits). That leads to many roads...

yes, but a patent covers an idea, not an implementation. The content of a CD is the work of an author. A CD format could be patented in the US, as could a CD reading or writing technique, but not the content.