Second draft of RFI response

Evan Leibovitch evan-ieNeDk6JonTYtjvyW6yDsg at public.gmane.org
Thu Feb 19 18:53:36 UTC 2009


Steve Harvey wrote:
>   "Open source software developers have never asserted patents or other 
> intellectual property claims on such formats and interfaces."
>
>   It takes only a single counter example to demolish this.
I consider myself protected by tense. :-)

"have never asserted" != " will never assert"

I was accurate in saying that it has not happened yet.

What happens the moment after I submit does not invalidate what I said.

Maybe it's a litttle disingenuous, and I probably would have changed it,
but the deadline is now (2pm) and I submitted an hour ago.

> I wouldn't trust that no vendor wouldn't try to sneak their patent pending interface into general acceptance by making the source code freely available.
>   
Possibly, but a patent that was knowingly infected into an open source
project (especially by the inventor!) would have a very difficult time
asserting a claim in court.

Newer FOSS licenses such as the GPL4, I believe, expressly deal with this.

IANAPLBIAAPH(*)

- Evan


(*) I Am Not A Patent Lawyer But I Am A Patent Owner (US 5579117)
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