I chatted with a friend of mine who is an IP lawyer regarding s3tc. Here was his response:
"I looked at the claims, and they all seem to be related to processing, as opposed to data structures or protocol, so it seems as long as the driver isn't doing any processing you should be fine. Since you understand what you're doing better than I, I would suggests reading through the claims and asking yourself if your driver does any of that. If so, we should talk more, but if not you'll be ok. You only infringe the patent if you're doing what's recited in the claims. " He also suggested we contact the law firm managing the patent if we had any questions since they are more likely to respond than S3: SKJERVEN, MORRILL, MACPHERSON, FRANKLIN & FRIEL City: SAN JOSE State: CA Zip: 95110 Phone: (408) 283-1222 for those interested, the relevant patents are: 5,956,431 and 6,658,146. Alex __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Finance: Get your refund fast by filing online. http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html ------------------------------------------------------- SF.Net is sponsored by: Speed Start Your Linux Apps Now. Build and deploy apps & Web services for Linux with a free DVD software kit from IBM. Click Now! http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=1356&alloc_id=3438&op=click -- _______________________________________________ Dri-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/dri-devel