Memory management and patents
Posted Aug 23, 2002 22:11 UTC (Fri) by
josmala (guest, #3401)
In reply to:
Memory management and patents by leandro
Parent article:
Memory management and patents
IF anyone in hardware industry would DARE to sue linux kernel developers for their software patents the result would probably hurt them a LOT more than if they would of simply given up on their patents.
Consider if your company would be considered the great evil by linux developers, AND amound of bad PRESS they would definitely get, there would probably be EVERY possible bad aspect of the company coming publicly in technical world. Their sales figures would definitely drop within few months by figure by loosing their image. The stain that they would get in their image would be such that no amount of marketing money could fix it.
And if the company it self would use linux they definitely wouldn't do it since they might loose some valued employees to other companies, and hiring when next upturn comes would become harder.
If the suing company would be like M$ they would probably get extra monopoly investigations and it would be a risk for them too.
What about other software companies. Well if they HOPE to sell their products in Linux market some time they had damaged their reputation and that hurts. Also they might find them self in trouble with their current customers. And suddenly have harder time to find good programmers.
To simply put NO ONE is goint to use their patents for linux kernel, they got too much LOOSE if they would even try it.
Most wouldn't consider much of a damage if linux kernel would use the algorithm they have patented.
Only reason they could use that would be that someone in linux industry would sue them over patent, and then they would deny the other company for using kernel versions that use their patents. [Consider if redhat would sue SGI with some software patent, SGI could tell redhat NOT TO sell/use kernel version 2.6 which would incorporate their patents, as a counter suit, or more easily, show RH that they could sue them with that, and let them decide weather stop shipping any products that use the patents or withdraw their case, easy choise don't you think, SGI could use the patent just to settle a court case with no one outside case to ever know what really happened.]
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