If MMs customers start requesting features or functionality, I would expect MM to respond regardless of what is (or isn't) in BD.
Not if BD claims intellectual property on it? See where I'm going with this yet?
Todd,
I think you are over-estimating the current power of intellectual property protections.
You cannot copyright an idea or concept, only the manifest expression of it; that's why you can copyright a typeface, but not letters. I suspect the same is true with programming languages (copyright the compiler and its algorithms, but not the language that it compiles), but I can't be certain.
If BD added something that was so innovative that they could patent it, that would come close to your worries. For that reason, they cannot (in theory) patent what is obvious; customers clamoring for specific features from two parties would pretty easily make those features "obvious" in a court. (NOTE: if MM customers ask for MM to add a feature, and no one even thought of that feature until BD made it, that's different.)
Trademark law may apply, but it would be very difficult for BD to claim that a certain tag or set of tags is their trademark, and if they did then it would only prevent MM from publicly associating itself with those tags and wouldn't prevent the MM engine from understanding them.
You are trying to liken this to the Sun/Microsoft thing with Java. As I understand it, what Microsoft did was add things to Java that only worked on Windows; Sun was perfectly free to add them to Java but then Sun would eliminate it's cross platform ability so it refused.
I'm not a lawyer, of course, and even if I were these things aren't cut-and-dry. But I think you're worrying over nothing.
--
Ben Curtis
WebSciences International
http://www.websciences.org/
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