On Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 03:12:35PM -0700, Darren New spake thusly: > I'm pretty sure patent law doesn't actually work that way. IANAL, but > you need to actually publish the list of patents that cover your device > on the outside of the device, for example. I strongly suspect MS is just > saying they have patents that cover all kinds of things, but they don't > really have anything that would stand up.
You may be right. That's just what everyone else has been saying. But if what you make is software how do you list the patenst on the cover of your device? I've never seen a piece of software that listed what patents apply. But people have been forced to pay to license software patents. > Depending on what you mean by "in court", perhaps. I can't imagine > they'd sue before they asked you to pay a license fee. Certainly they'd > hurt their case if they actually sued someone after they said "you're > violating our patents, but we won't tell you which ones." Microsoft claims Linux violates patents but hasn't requested any license fee at all. The threat is that they will sue. And nobody, lawyer or otherwise, has come out and said that they can't sue before requesting a license fee. Nobody seems to be able to come up with any way to clear Linux's good name or make Microsoft show their cards. > In any case, sure, MS could sue you over patent violations, regardless > of whether you're using Mono, JVM, or code you wrote yourself in your > basement. As could Sun. You have to look at the business aspects to ask > yourself what the likelihood is. It seems one shouldn't have to guess that the probability of being sued is low and use that to assure one's customers and investors. -- Tracy Reed http://tracyreed.org
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