On Tue, 2006-01-24 at 12:03 +0100, Ralf Corsepius wrote: > According to RH until recently, mono/C#/.net are subject to potential > patent claims. I don't have any inside information from RH or FF, but I have noticed that the main patent application that's been discussed (the API patent application) recently became abandoned. Microsoft received a non-final rejection last October 21st, and they had three months to fix the application, but they didn't do anything. Now that they've missed the deadline, they can't try a whole new application, because (under US law) you have to file a patent application within a year of publishing the details of the invention, and it's been more than a year. I'm not a lawyer, and this isn't legal advice, but I did spend some time reading the US patent office's patent examiner manual. As far as I can tell, the only way they can revive that patent application is if they can show that there was an unavoidable or unintentional delay for the whole three months. I think that's pretty unlikely, so I personally feel a lot more comfortable about using/contributing to mono and mono apps. There may be other patents or other patent applications, but I haven't seen anyone directly identify any. The one I'm talking about is here: http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1='20030028685'.PGNR.&OS=DN/20030028685&RS=DN/20030028685 Mitch -- fedora-extras-list mailing list fedora-extras-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-extras-list
