This is why I drink: a discussion of Fedora's legal state

Posted Feb 16, 2017 9:59 UTC (Thu) by vxIjhjYG (guest, #110420)
In reply to: This is why I drink: a discussion of Fedora's legal state by jhoblitt
Parent article: This is why I drink: a discussion of Fedora's legal state

I am curious to know the reasoning behind that. To avoid interested parties trying to prolong their patents somehow, maybe?

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This is why I drink: a discussion of Fedora's legal state

Posted Feb 16, 2017 11:13 UTC (Thu) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

I'd guess that it's more prosaic; the calendar is effectively a nice way to present legal advice that could be trivially rewritten as "Red Hat's legal team believe that there are no patents affecting $thing after $date". Given that it's legal advice, you run into the usual "this isn't legal advice and I'm not your lawyer" issues - from Red Hat's point of view, it's simpler to not publish the calendar at all (in any form) than to publish it, have to keep it updated, deal with problems caused when they update it on the basis of new information but you don't get the update etc.

This is why I drink: a discussion of Fedora's legal state

Posted Feb 16, 2017 19:43 UTC (Thu) by niner (guest, #26151) [Link] (3 responses)

My guess is, publishing the calendar makes it public which patents Redhat does know about. That makes it easier to claim and/or prove willful infringement which can triple the damages.

This is why I drink: a discussion of Fedora's legal state

Posted Feb 16, 2017 19:47 UTC (Thu) by sfeam (subscriber, #2841) [Link] (2 responses)

That makes no sense. If a patent is on the calendar, that means they knew about it and avoided using it . Pretty much the opposite of willful infringement.

This is why I drink: a discussion of Fedora's legal state

Posted Feb 16, 2017 20:32 UTC (Thu) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (1 responses)

>That makes no sense. If a patent is on the calendar, that means they knew about it and avoided using it . Pretty much the opposite of willful infringement.

"Willful infringement" is a legal definition, which may or may not bear any semblance to common sense.

This is why I drink: a discussion of Fedora's legal state

Posted Feb 25, 2017 18:57 UTC (Sat) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

I would add also, as a scientist, that "common sense" usually == "wrong".

Cheers,
Wol