On Aug 1, 2005, at 10:22 AM, Justin Erenkrantz wrote:
Furthermore, my understanding of copyright law is that you can't be tainted by 'reading' source code years ago and then writing a version independently. (In fact, the examples I've heard of are 'minutes apart' is legally acceptable.) Of course, patent infringement occurs whether you've read the code or not. FWIW, our compiler languages class here at UC Irvine teaches Java internals - therefore, they'd all be 'tainted' under this definition - which isn't actually the case.
I agree with Justin. BTW, the two sides of the coin are copyright and trade secret law. Copyright does not apply to things that you may have learned in the past. Trade secret and NDA text could apply, but only if the code has never been revealed to the public. BigCo cannot claim trade secrets on anything they have released under a non-NDA source code license, published in a book, or posted to their website. I doubt that there is anything in J2SE/EE that still qualifies as a trade secret, since the JCP has revealed all of the interfaces. The CLA is sufficient for all of that. We just need to remind people of their obligations under the CLA. ....Roy --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
