On Fri, 23 Dec 2005, Thomas Vander Stichele wrote: > Just to make sure I follow you - this only applies to the binaries, > correct ? We both agree that patent law does not stop you from shipping > source code that implements patented techniques ? Even this is questionable. It depends a lot on what constitutes patent infringement. Wikipedia sez "In U.S. law, an infringement may occur where the defendant has made, used, sold, offered to sell, or imported the infringing invention or its equivalent." Because software patents, such as the MP3 ones, typically claim a "method by which X happens", the source code could be argued to be the equivalent of the invention described in the MP3 patents' claims. Form doesn't seem to be important in patent law, only function - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctrine_of_equivalents I think a lot of this discussion here consists of us trying to be patent lawyers when we're not. While free software hackers are generally much more aware of IP law than your average Joe, we're just missing too much knowledge of patent case law and general "legal flavor" to have any idea which way this goes, legally speaking. I expect there will be future developments in the media formats area of Fedora, but for now it seems unlikely that we will do more than link to the packages you have kindly made available. Best, -- Elliot Red Hat Summit Nashville (May 30 - June 2, 2006) http://www.redhat.com/promo/summit/ -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
