Yaakov Nemoy wrote: > The first patent holder that sues freedesktop.org is just going to > look like a bad guy. > > a) The press will look really bad > > b) freedesktop.org does not make million dollar annual profits from > these codecs the way Red Hat, Novell, or Mandrivia would and they > could never hope to seek the same level of damages > > c) lawyers might take this case on good will, because of the high > profile nature, and the understanding of how open source works and is > good for the legal industry, and one of these lawyers might bust these > patents. > > I hope these arguments are enough for people to realize that just > because it's open source does not mean Red Hat can *afford* to use the > software. This comment really sums up the situation very well. Those not familiar with how US corporations have *for decades* practiced pro-active protection against patent suits... read Yaakov's last line again. Red Hat legal has to consider not just whether its possible for suits to arise from patent infringement, but WHO is going to be involved. They would need to be very confident that the 'big players' cannot end up on the other side of the codec issue against them and even more careful about the numerous basically frivolous patent suit scalping companies with no assets to lose and no intention of profiting from a patent by protecting a product they actually make. Thats not easy to guarantee. There are quite a number of patent suits in the US won by a company that just bought the patent rights *in order* to go to court with them. The fact that noone has gone after yet freedesktop.org (or any other example of someone 'under US law' who is not being as careful as RH is) has NO BEARING on whether its safe to assume noone will try against Red Hat. There is no legal standing with patents to say 'they infringed on it before us so its ok'. The RH legal guys are being reasonably cautious regarding codecs; they know they *could* go right ahead and drop them in, but they also know that could cause headaches later. -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
