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RE: IBM's patent offensiveRE: IBM's patent offensivePosted Aug 21, 2003 11:52 UTC (Thu) by rabnud (guest, #2839)Parent article: IBM's patent offensive Patents sounds rather icky: if software is patented but also freely editable (and redistribution is required by GPL), does the patent continue to cover the edited code, or does the new code constitute new works? If new code is not covered by a patent, define "new works" - does it begin with an added brace? A new conditional statement? A falsely placed comma? Either the code is free of restrictions to the public or it is not free of restrictions, can't be both, IMO.
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RE: IBM's patent offensive Posted Aug 25, 2003 10:15 UTC (Mon) by wookey (subscriber, #5501) [Link] It sounds like you are confusing copyright and patents. With patents, changes to the code itself don't make any difference at all - it is the final effect or device that counts. In software terms this means it doesn't matter what language you write it in or what the code looks like - if it does the 'claimed thing' then you can be sued for infringement. This is the big difference between copyright (which we generally find a good and useful thing) and patents (which we don't). With copyright you are free to re-implement an idea in a new way and compete with the original version. With Patents you aren't - even inventing the idea yourself entirely independently is no defense. The EU vote on software patent legislation is on Sept 1st - if you are in the EU and haven't hassled your representative (or even told them from an American perspective how bad it all is) then yesterday is the time to do it.
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