Pavel,
You really need to talk to one of the Suse attorneys to get the answers
you really want. We've done a lot of patents here over the years, and
you need to consult a legal professional who really understands US
patent law. It's complicated.
The typical procedure is:
1. Identify patents you may infringe with your project.
2. Have a patent lawyer review the patent "claims" to see if any
methods you will use will be identical to their methods decribed in the
patent and could infringe. If any do consult with the patent attorney
about alternate methods that do not infringe.
3. Review past litigation claims the patent holders may have brought
against infringing parties to determine have narrow or broad their
patent claims have been interpreted by the US Courts.
4. Review challenges to the patent claims filed with the USPTO by other
patent atttorneys. Under US patent law, there's concept known as
"clustering" (not the computer flavor). Clustering is a "trash patent"
strategy where US companies will attempt to create several related
"trash" patents in any attempt to protect a central patent by closing
off alternate methods described in the patent claims that would allow
someone to circumvent the patent claims by using alternate methods.
Most US companies use this strategy so you end up finding a way around a
patent only to dicsover they have patented some alternate method you
could have used in place of the original patent claim -- very sneaky
stuff.
5. Perform a "prior art" search to identify examples of the patent that
may have been used in the industry and predated the patent being issued
(if you can show prior art, under US law, the USPTO is required to
invalidate any claims in the patent if prior art exists for these
claims).
6. Have periodic design reviews with the patent attorney to review
method areas where the code may infringe.
7. Don't publish any code anywhere until the attorney's are satisfied
with a fair degree of certainty all the infringement areas have been
covered.
8. Anytime you are dealing with dancing around or replicating patented
methods, there is a danger of litigation by the patent holders. Be
prepared to litigate and have legal resources available after you post
the code -- they may come after you even if you did not infringe just to
see if they can get something.
:-)
Jeff
Pavel Machek wrote:
>
> Hi!
>
> > > Patents on software algorithms are illegal in most of europe.
> >
> > It's a bit more subtle than that. I've talked a bit about that with
> > the university professor who taught an intellectual property course
> > for engineering students and algorithms and mathematic stuff as such
> > is not patentable. In combination with a physical device it is. So in
> > his opinion, according to Belgian law, Unisys wouldn't have gotten a
> > patent on LZW compressing, but they could have gotten a patent on the
> > application of LZW for communication through a telephone line, i.e. in
> > modem application.
>
> And if I do LZW in software instead of in hardware, I'm still in
> violation of their patent? But gif is certainly okay, right?
> Pavel
> --
> The best software in life is free (not shareware)! Pavel
> GCM d? s-: !g p?:+ au- a--@ w+ v- C++@ UL+++ L++ N++ E++ W--- M- Y- R+
>
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu
> Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Jul 07 2000 - 21:00:21 EST