On Mon, 2006-05-15 at 13:01 -0400, Mark Webbink wrote: > This is not correct: > > - Force the invalidation of the mp3 patents via estoppel > (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estoppel) We know that lots of other > distributions are including mp3 support (and have been for years, with > no legal repercussions), we're the odd duck out. Thomson has to > enforce > that patent for everyone, not just for Red Hat, for it to stay valid. > I > say we re-enable mp3 support in Fedora Core 6, and call out Thomson on > their poor patent enforcement. > > Estoppel does not invalidate a patent. It may provide a defense > against an infringement claim, but a patent holder simply not > enforcing a patent against someone else does not give you the right to > assert an estoppel defense. For the defense to be valid you would > have to show that the patent holder has said or done something that > induced you to change your behavior and that such reliance was > reasonable. Also, please note that there is nothing in the law that > says that a patent holder has to treat all other parties equally. A > patent holder can choose to license one person and not license the > next. This is why I'm not a lawyer. Thanks for the clarification Mark! I withdraw that item from Matthew's plate. ~spot -- Tom "spot" Callaway: Red Hat Senior Sales Engineer || GPG ID: 93054260 Fedora Extras Steering Committee Member (RPM Standards and Practices) Aurora Linux Project Leader: http://auroralinux.org Lemurs, llamas, and sparcs, oh my!
