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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