On Sul, 2003-12-28 at 17:16, Roland Scheidegger wrote: > btw I don't think you can lose a patent, even in europe. You can lose > trademarks if you don't defend them. If a patent is actually valid and > can be enforced (bascially court will decide this, not patent office) is > a different matter of course.
In certain cases you can. Mostly by a process known as Estoppel (which is just a very old word for a promise). The behaviour is very different to that of trademarks however. For example if I own a patent and I release code that uses that patent and invite you to use it then it is likely that if I tried to sue you for patent violation I'd lose. By my actions I made a promise to you not to do so. Now you know why every intel and other document contains "no patents licensed" type clauses 8) ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: IBM Linux Tutorials. Become an expert in LINUX or just sharpen your skills. Sign up for IBM's Free Linux Tutorials. Learn everything from the bash shell to sys admin. Click now! http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=1278&alloc_id=3371&op=click -- _______________________________________________ Dri-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/dri-devel
