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Although the Y2K bug failed to bite, and patents only last 20 years, Basile Anastassakis of Brazil is filing patents around the world on a computer date-handling system that will cope with century rollovers until New Year’s Eve 4999 (WO 99/49389). He suggests a six-digit code in which two digits record the day in Arabic numerals, and one digit records the months up to September, with A, B and C denoting October, November and December. The first two digits of the year are represented by a lower-case letter from the Latin alphabet and the last two digits by Arabic numerals.