Rahul Sundaram wrote:
Marc Wiriadisastra wrote:
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2200717/microsoft-sharpens-aims-patent
"People who use Red Hat, at least with respect to our intellectual
property, in a sense have an obligation to compensate us," Ballmer
said last week at a company event in London discussing online
services in the UK.
Is this going to affect Fedora indirectly?
(Speaking for myself)
We can only speculate on what is planned. Depends on whether this is
marketing FUD or legal action, it can affect everyone involved and not
just Fedora. Note the careful use of "People who use Red Hat" and not
Red Hat itself. Also the comments were made in London and not U.S and
that's important because different regions have difference laws on
what constitutes false advertising.
This one has the entire talk and you can see for yourself how well
this plays into the Microsoft Novell patent deal earlier.
http://www.betanews.com/article/Microsoft_Scrambling_to_Explain_Ballmer_Comment_on_Red_Hat_Linux/1191963805
Some other relevant links
http://tieguy.org/blog/2007/10/10/on-joe-on-patents/
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,2193713,00.asp
http://www.press.redhat.com/2007/05/14/deploy-with-confidence/
Rahul
My understanding is that the UK would still have Trade Practices Law (I
study it at uni atm) which would constitute Misleading conduct on
Microsoft's behalf.
It could also be construed as Defamatory or Libel since he is defaming
RedHat before you couldn't really question it because he was labeling
Linux users very broad. In this speech he singled out RedHat.
I know you guys at RedHat Legal will look at it but yeah it was
something I was shocked about when I read it.
Cheers,
Marc
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