X and Eye Candy

[John Macdonald]

On Tue, Mar 14, 2006 at 03:50:02PM -0500, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:
> I have no knowledge of why the card makers withhold specs.  Depending
> on the reason that is operative, they may release specs for old cards.
> 
> Plausible reasons off the top of my head:
> 
> 1) patent infringement suits might arise if opening the source makes
>    it easier for patent holders to see that the card might be using
>    techniques covered by patents.  This sounds farfetched to me -- as
>    an idealist, I expect that the companies pay for all patents they
>    use already.  On the other hand, I've seen this put forward more
>    than once.
[ ... ]

Not quite so farfetched.  I'd expect them to pay for the patents
that they intentionally use and any others that they notice
tha obviously apply, but still be afraid that there are a few
hundred or so additional patents lurking around that could be
interpreted as covering the code they use just because they
wrote the obvious code to solve a straight-forward problem.

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