Hi!
A
I can understand, a patent holder can blame potential patent infringer in case
of financial advantage from using it.
As
far as we’re writing open source software and don’t selling it and having
no advantages from patent using, a legal relevance of claim is doubtful!
Only
Linux distributors which sells medias and so indirectly has financial advantages
falls under amenability towards a patent
holder.
I
think it’s better to get some consultation of jurist from organization
such as FSF. Or just contact with Gnome or Debian legal department.
Regards,
Alex
From:
nautilus-list-bounces gnome org [mailto:nautilus-list-bounces gnome org] On
Behalf Of Giacomo Bordiga
Sent: Tuesday, December 02, 2008 10:40 PM
To: Andre Klapper
Cc: nautilus-list gnome org
Subject: Re: [Nautilus-list] Nice feature to implement in future
releases
I really cannot understand what you are saying. You are
stating that what i'm saying is naive and far from reality, right? Let's take a
look.
Giacomo Bordiga:
> Before implementing it someone should really read the patent and search
for other patents maybe covering other cases.
Is this advice too weak? Because there is already a patent maybe covering the feature
should i just give up coding it?
Giacomo Bordiga:
>You do not have to be a lawyer to check if a feature is covered by patents.
Only lawyers can state if a feature is covered by a patent or not? If us,
mortals, cannot state that, how can someone code anything if he cannot say if
it's patented or not?
Even if i'm not a lawyer (and not i've not taken any law lessons, i'm an
engineer) i'm not inexperienced about patents and intellectual property
(however not in the software field).
Please, prove me wrong and we all will learn something new.
--
Giacomo Bordiga
P.S.
> And remember that lawyers, half of the times, are wrong.
In a trial there is only one winner. However this was mostly ironic.
