Tracy Reed wrote:
On Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 02:46:47PM -0700, Darren New spake thusly:
You've heard of Mono, yes? Why can't you rewrite Mono to "go around" any
patent?
So far they won't tell anyone what patents apply.
I'm pretty sure patent law doesn't actually work that way. IANAL, but
you need to actually publish the list of patents that cover your device
on the outside of the device, for example. I strongly suspect MS is just
saying they have patents that cover all kinds of things, but they don't
really have anything that would stand up.
You would have to go
to the point of no return by getting sued for them to be revealed in
court
Depending on what you mean by "in court", perhaps. I can't imagine
they'd sue before they asked you to pay a license fee. Certainly they'd
hurt their case if they actually sued someone after they said "you're
violating our patents, but we won't tell you which ones."
In any case, sure, MS could sue you over patent violations, regardless
of whether you're using Mono, JVM, or code you wrote yourself in your
basement. As could Sun. You have to look at the business aspects to ask
yourself what the likelihood is.
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
--
[email protected]
http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-lpsg
