Patents != patents ?

Dennis Gilmore dennis at ausil.us
Sat Sep 30 15:02:30 UTC 2006


Once upon a time Friday 29 September 2006 9:48 pm, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> On Fri, 2006-09-29 at 07:57 -0500, Tom 'spot' Callaway wrote:

> They know they own patents, they know their product uses them, they know
> their product contains them, they "sell" their product under certain
> terms of usage (== license), clearly describing their intentions (OSS,
> BSD licensed).
>
> Common sense tells this should be sufficient: It's the copyright/patent
> holder's intention to let users use their work/product under the BSD
> terms of conditions.
Yes  but without something in writing that is perpetual and royalty free they 
sell the company  the new owners say  hey your using our patents  and not 
paying a royalty  and go on a suing spree.  

> > The BSD license (unless they added some wording) doesn't provide an
> > unlimited, irrevocable, and royalty-free patent grant to software
> > patents implemented in the code.
>
> Well, nothing is unlimited, irrevocable - ever ;)
It can be terminated for future use   but not past use.  so they could revoke 
it for a new release  but whats out there is always out there.


> I am sure, many other packages contain patented algorithms, but either
> the authors don't know about this fact or the authors (patent holders)
> don't mention it.
Quite possibly

Dennis
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