OSRM's patent study [LWN.net]

OSRM's patent study

Posted Aug 5, 2004 13:07 UTC (Thu) by rjw (guest, #10415)
In reply to: OSRM's patent study by BrucePerens
Parent article: OSRM's patent study

What non law changing measures could be taken to counter a bit of the patent threat?

An assurance from IBM or HP that they will immediately enforce all their patents against any company suing a free software project for patent infringement was the best I could come up with. This only really helps against mid sized enemies - MS would probably feel they could weather it if they felt they were fighting a death battle (but it might discourage them), and "Pure IP" scumbags remain productless.... so it probably would not really help against the likely culprits.

Other than that PubPat is about the only thing that seems any good.

We really need the law changed....

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OSRM's patent study

Posted Aug 5, 2004 15:49 UTC (Thu) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link]

The biggest problem with having IBM or HP enforce patents against whoever goes after us is that they may be cross-licensed with the bad guy, which would make them ineffective in that case. If the bad guy is Microsoft, that' s the case.

HP also has some sort of non-agression agreement with MS which they made up once I left HP. The director of Revolution OS told me that he had to change the DVD jacket photos due to that agreement! He removed a windows logo in a slashed circle from the DVD that HP sponsors. If you have a new and old copy of the disc you can see what changed. No doubt the terms of the non-agression agreement apply to more than DVD jackets.

We must keep in mind that MS is a valued business partner of our biggest friends.

They can help us somewhat, but they won't necessarily blow their Windows partnership while Linux is in legal trouble.

Bruce