DC SIGAda
The Program for Tuesday, 11 November 2003 has been postponed.
It has been rescheduled for the next DC SIGAda Chapter Meeting on 8 January 2004.
There is no DC or Baltimore SIGAda Chapter Meeting Scheduled for December.
All are encouraged to go to Sigada 2003.

The presentation will start at 7:30 P.M. (Refreshments and Social at 7:00 P.M.) at the new MITRE 2 Building in McLean, Virginia

Munchies and soft drinks will be served at 7:00 PM, the general meeting will start at 7:30 PM, followed by the program.

The focus of this presentation is on applying for US Patents, particularly as it pertains to software applications. Whether or not you ever plan to file for a patent, understanding software patents is important to successfully utilize ideas that have been patented. Knowledge of the rights of a patent holder and how to use the patented ideas appropriately can benefit your work as a software engineer. Some of the areas addressed by this presentation include:

Although the presentation is focused on software patents, the concept is broad and can address needs to include every-day "useful" ideas/patents, that folks think about, to include those ideas to improve things around the home or office.

Lester Sussman is the CEO and Founder of ceBerg, Inc. He has 20 years experience in the design and development of complex information systems. He graduated as an Electronic and Electrical Engineer from the University of Cape Town, South Africa in 1983. Mr. Sussman worked for a number of companies in the greater Washington D.C. area including MCI Telecommunications, PRC and INTELSAT. At MCI, Mr. Sussman was one of the principal systems architects in the design and development of MCI's next generation network management system, which remains in critical use today. In 1994, Mr. Sussman joined INTELSAT as a senior systems engineer. Upon joining, he identified the potential value of the Internet for INTELSAT's business. He helped securely connect the organization to the Internet, conducted seminars throughout INTELSAT on its benefits, and lobbied INTELSAT 's management to market Internet connectivity via satellite. Mr. Sussman's efforts culminated in the launch of INTELSAT's Internet connectivity product, at a summit meeting attended by the more than 140 global telecommunications providers that owned the organization. Mr. Sussman was instrumental in acquiring one of the Summit's keynote speakers, Dr John Gage, Chief Researcher at Sun Microsystems.

Mr. Sussman is well qualified to present on software patents. He currently holds four sole US patents, has an additional six pending patent applications and is researching a further two patents. He has licensed one of the patents for upfront fees to companies such as Sharp and Casio. For the past couple of years he has been working on launching a high-tech start-up anchored on his fourth patent - embedding multi-media Yellow Pages directly into a phone. His coordinates are:

MITRE2 is on Colshire Drive just inside the beltway south of Route 123. Colshire Road is known as "Scotts Xing" on the North side of Route 123.

Colshire Road is located on Route 123, East of I-495 and West of the Dulles Access Highway.

• Going Northbound on 123 from I-495, Colshire Road is located 2 stoplights on the right.
• Going Southbound on 123 from the Dulles Access Highway, Colshire Road is located at the first stoplight on the left.

From I-495 south of Route 123 (Dolley Madison Boulevard):

From Dulles Access Toll Road or I-495 north of the Dulles Access Toll Road:

To obtain a map of MITRE2 Building and the MITRE Campus, visit =>
http://www.acm.org/sigada/locals/dc/Directions_MITRE2.html.

At the DC SIGAda meeting on 8 May 2003, Karl Nyberg of the Grebyn Corporation gave an excellent presentation titled: Optical Character Recognition (OCR) of Cryptographic Source Code. Slides from his presentation are available online as a Powerpoint Presentation at http://www.acm.org/sigada/locals/dc/200305_OCR_of_Cryptographic_Source_Code.ppt (ppt, 118KB).

• 7-11 December 2003 - SIGAda 2003 will be held in San Diego, California. Details at http://www.acm.org/sigada/conf/sigada2003
• 10 February 2004 - The next meeting of the ACM Baltimore SIGAda Chapter Meeting for Tuesday - TBD will be speaking on TBD.
• 11 March 2004 - The next meeting of the ACM DC SIGAda Chapter Meeting for Thursday - TBD will be speaking on TBD.

Please provide suggestions on the Web site and its contents. We are particularly interested in ways the DC SIGAda Home Page can serve you better.

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Many thanks to all earlier participants, contributors, speakers, advisors, and friends, who are involved in helping to produce and attend the meetings.