On Fri, 2003-10-17 at 17:36, Geoff Thorpe wrote: > On October 17, 2003 11:56 am, Mike Hearn wrote: > > In future please do not raise patents on this list. What we don't know, > > can't hurt us (as much). > > IANAL, but I beg to differ.
I'm not either, but the advice I gave is based on similar discussions on lkml, which did have lawyers involved (at least, at some point). > First, Wine should be reasonably well protected against patent > infringement, because (and I mean this in the nicest way possible) it > doesn't actually *do* very much that could infringe. If only that were the case. In practice, I expect we have to implement things covered by patents, even if it is only things like DirectMusic, techniques in D3D - hell, if MS can get a patent on NTFS they can get a patent on anything. > Secondly, in any rare instance where Wine itself *might* infringe on > patents, the best course of action is to force the worms out of the > intestines. We probably cannot do that. If Microsoft implement a technology, so must we, it is inevitable. The reasoning is simple: the penalties for patent infringements are much higher if it can be shown you knew about the patent but ignored it. > Patent > holders, for better or worse, must enforce their IP for it to remain > valid. I think you're thinking of trademarks. You do not need to enforce patents to keep them. thanks -mike
