David Derauf wrote:
Do you have PING? http://www.chip.org/research/ping.htmPING is a really good idea, but it is subject to provisional patent protection in the US and is the subject of a full patent application by its authors (see http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.html&r=1&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=PG01&S1=kohane.IN.&OS=in/kohane&RS=IN/kohane
or *http://tinyurl.com/68arz or look up US Patent Application Number **20040199765
I'm not sure whether an international PCT application for it has been filed - if not, the patent, if it issues, may only affect the US. Nevertheless, anyone wishing to use PING should seek a written grant of a patent license from its authors - if I am not mistaken, the LGPL license under which PING is made available does not automatically grant such a patent license. The PING authors are good guys and are unlikely to use their patent to extract money from other open source projects or implementations of PING, but it is best to be safe than sorry and to get that in writing from them.
Tim C *
