[Patents] Re: [Patents] Re: [Patents] Re: [Patents] brevets et logiciel libres (version elaboree)

[John Tobey spam@john-edwin-tobey.org]

PILCH Hartmut <phm@a2e.de> wrote:
> On Mon, 6 Sep 1999, John Tobey wrote:
>  
> > > Bruce Perens has been threatened with a lawsuit by a company who got a
> > > patent on his e-fence concept just a few months before he published his
> > > program. Another programmer who wrote a GNU program had to stop because 
> > > of
> > > a patent which came later than his idea.  This case is mentioned in a
> > > paper by Richard Stallman on http://lpf.ai.mit.edu/Patents/.
>  
> > Hrmm.  Yes, I had read about these two cases.  Maybe instead of
> > claiming that "many have been sued", we should point out that many
> > American programmers *risk* being sued or are *threatened* with legal
> > action.
> 
> Or speak about "legal harrassment" instead of "suing".  
> There are also the Thomson and the IPIX case.  Hasn't there been any suing
> yet in these?

I don't know anything about these cases.  AltaVista search on "IPIX"
"patent" turns up something about lenses and QuickTime virtual reality
software.  I couldn't find anything with "Thomson".  Can you please
tell me a little about them?

-John