On Tue, 2009-07-07 at 14:27 +0100, Jonathan Underwood wrote: > Not answering Ajax's question specifically, but this looks a bit iffy: > > "If you file, maintain, or voluntarily participate in a patent > infringement lawsuit against a Microsoft implementation of any Covered > Specification, then this personal promise does not apply with respect > to any Covered Implementation made or used by you." > > So, say a few years have passed and C# and the CLI is now a very key > component of the stack, and Red Hat (for example) filed a patent > lawsuit against MS for something unrelated, MS could turn around and > revoke the promise not to sue Red Hat for distributing a C#/CLI > implementation, crippling the product that Red Hat now relies on. So there's two things wrong here. The first one is the "turn around" statement. The very first sentence starts with "Microsoft irrevocably promises". Any assurance made by the Community Promise is forever. The second is the retaliation model. In the language of the Promise: "If you [sue for patent] against a Microsoft implementation of any Covered Specification [...]". A Covered Specification is one that they're covering with this promise. So, if Frobnitz Inc. distributed Mono, and then filed suit against Microsoft for infringing one of Frobnitz' patents in the Microsoft C# implementation, they would lose the right to distribute Mono [1]. However, if Frobnitz distributes Mono, and then files suit against Microsoft for a rendering technique patent used in Internet Explorer, they would still be allowed to distribute Mono [2]. In other words, it's a MAD agreement. You're not even agreeing that any patents they may hold that read on the Covered Spec are _valid_. You're simply agreeing that neither of you will assert any patent claims against the other, for the scope of the Covered Specs, iff you chose to use/make/sell/distribute/etc an implementation of one of the Covered specs. Now this still might not be something you want to agree to. For example, if you hold patents that you think already read on MS's C# implementation, you might not want to lose the ability to exercise them. The question may also be made irrelevant by some third-party patent claim that you think would read on a Covered Spec. Finally, there is the detail that the Promise only extends to what they call "Microsoft Necessary Claims", which are patents necessary to implement any required portion of the spec. There's some wiggle room in the word "necessary"; you might be able to implement a given feature some other way, in which case the patent would presumably not be covered. There's also no assurance over patents involved for optional functionality. (Not a lawyer. Not even a Microsoft fan.) [1] - Specifically, they would lose any rights given to them by the Community Promise. They might still have the right to distribute through some other legal mechanism. [2] - Again, they would only still retain the right to distribute to the extent that they are not infringing some other legal agreement between them and Microsoft. - ajax
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