On Tue, Oct 07, 2003 at 08:52:34PM -0500, Steve Langasek wrote: > Last I'd heard, "knowing infringement" in the US required the complicity > of a patent lawyer, since mere mortals are no longer deemed qualified to > judge for themselves whether a given usage is infringing. :P
As I understand it (which may be incorrect), we're deemed capable of understand a patent and knowingly infringing upon it, but not capable of knowing if we're not infringing without a lawyer. That's how we end up in the situation that simply reading patents results in higher liability. Convenient arrangement. > In which case, we know only that someone has *claimed* (out of court) > that ASF is covered by Microsoft patents. I haven't seen any of the > patents (and I'm not looking). You? In any case, it doesn't matter whether we "know" we're infringing or not; liability is only decreased if you're unknowing, not eliminated. I think the only interesting question is whether a phone call from a non-legal Microsoft employee is enough for Debian to count the patent as enforced. -- Glenn Maynard