Re: Negotiating for using Royalty Free patents

[Sean Middleditch <elanthis awesomeplay com>]

On Sat, 2004-04-10 at 23:17 +0100, Mike Hearn wrote:

> On Sat, 10 Apr 2004 13:23:06 -0600, Ryan McDougall wrote:

> > Apples drawer
> > patent is so obviously obvious (#6133918) it boggles the mind that it
> > was even granted. Although I guess thats why they only use them for
> > defence, they'd be laughed out of court if they tried pressing their
> > luck.
> 
> Second mistake: raising specific patents on a public mailing list. I
> thought this had been covered a thousand times already - you do NOT talk
> about specific patents in a public free software forum!

For those who aren't familiar with this issue, which at least one person
seems to be, the reasoning is fairly clear.  (This is the simplified
explanation, not the 400-page complete legal explanation.  IANAL.)  If
we violate a patent unknowingly, we can't be sued for malicious intent
and damages, although we will of course have to stop violating the
patent on request.  If we know about the patent and violate it, then we
are intentionally breaking the law, in which case the developers can get
sued big time.

> Please, "negotiating" with these companies is unlikely to go anywhere and
> will probably just make the situation worse. In future if you want to take

As above, the "worse" can be because now Apple knows of specific patents
that we may be violating, and the path of resistance (effort) to sue any
developers just became a lot less, since someone's gone and handed them
our necks.

There are tons of patents out there whose owners have forgotten about
them, or whose owners don't feel like policing everyone on, or whose
owners just aren't paying attention to us.

Let sleeping dragons lie.
-- 
Sean Middleditch <elanthis awesomeplay com>
AwesomePlay Productions, Inc.