GNU GPL Friendly patents (fwd)

[PILCH Hartmut <phm@a2e.de>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 27 May 2002 15:39:03 +0200
From: Loic Dachary <loic@gnu.org>
To: friends@fsfeurope.org
Cc: Alexandre Dulaunoy <alex@conostix.com>
Subject: GNU GPL Friendly patents


        Hi,

        Alexandre Dulaunoy pointed me to the following patents:

        http://www.levien.com/patents.html

        The page says:

----
 Whereas, Raph Levien (hereinafter "Inventor") has obtained patent
 protection for related technology (hereinafter "Patented
 Technology"), Inventor wishes to aid the the GNU free software
 project in achieving its goals, and Inventor also wishes to increase
 public awareness of Patented Technology, Inventor hereby grants a
 fully paid up, nonexclusive, royalty free license to practice the
 patents listed below ("the Patents") if and only if practiced in
 conjunction with software distributed under the terms of any version
 of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software
 Foundation, 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111. Inventor
 reserves all other rights, including without limitation, licensing
 for software not distributed under the GNU General Public License.
----
        Also see

        http://www.advogato.org/article/89.html

        and in particular:

----
 The patent grant itself is a very simple document. I've had my lawyer
 look at it, so hopefully it's legally sound. I would encourage all
 other holders of patents that may be relevant for GPL software, and
 who wish to help the Gnu project, to adopt this grant for their own
 patents.
----
        does anyone have additional undisclosed information about
these patents ? Is the published patent license safe enough ? What
happens if someone offers 1 million euros to the patent holder and
changes the patent license ? What happens if the patent holder changes
his mind and says that only a fool would consider a portion of text in
an HTML page to be a valid patent license ? The "hopefully legally sound"
does not confort at all: it implies that it's up to me and other users
to worry about the precise consequences of this patent license ;-) My
complete lack of understanding of the patent licensing rules does not
help either.

        Thanks for your help,

-- 
Loic   Dachary         http://www.dachary.org/  loic@dachary.org
12 bd  Magenta         http://www.senga.org/      loic@senga.org
75010    Paris         T: 33 1 42 45 07 97          loic@gnu.org
        GPG Public Key: http://www.dachary.org/loic/gpg.txt
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