On Aug 16, 2010, at 8:02 AM, Ghee Teo wrote: > On 08/16/10 04:14 PM, Edward Ned Harvey wrote: >> * Sun clearly had the intent to sue, or else they wouldn't have bothered >> filing all those patents, and wouldn't have bothered entering negotiations >> with Google. >> > Patents were filled in general years before the software/product are > released. Those patents concerned most likely to have filled years before > Androids was conceived. It is intellectual protection mechanism. As a > corporation, if you don't file patents, someone else will. If Sun didn't file > those patents, Google can certainly file them now and stop everyone use to > use Java if they wish to :)
Well, not quite. In that hypothetical scenario, the existing Java implementation would be prior art and would make the patent invalid. The problem is the Patent Office generally doesn't reject patents based on prior art, because they don't have the expertise. So someone would have to get sued and fight a lengthy legal battle to prove the patent was invalid. At least, that's my understanding. IANAL. -- David Brodbeck System Administrator, Linguistics University of Washington _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
