Re: [Patents] US patent reform strategy inaugurated by myths & lies

[PILCH Hartmut <phm@a2e.de>]

> > Those writing software for non-business reasons have
> > nothing to fear about software patents, except the paranoid
> > fantasies they like to dream up.
>
> Does the research exemption in patent law apply to all distribution
> of software in source code form?

No.
It has been proposed to do something like that, but the patent lobby isn't
moving an inch in that direction either.

> Or can a free software development project be sued for patent
> infringement if it accepts and later redistributes code that
> implements a patented algorithm?

Of course they can, and they have been threatened with cease-and-desist
letters quite often.  Some examples are listed under

        http://swpat.ffii.org/patents/effects/

Even the CEC/BSA directive proposal, while disallowing claims to texts
(e.g. computer program product etc), does not protect freesw/oss
development from such threats.  Maybe Greg thinks that as long as sw
developpers are not actually sitting in jail their complaints can be
attributed to "paranoid fantasies".  Here again, I may cite the east
german example case.  Very few people were in fact sitting in jail due to
thought crimes.  But the existence of the threat had bad enough effects.

Apart from that, even if politicians should be willing to deviate from the
patent lobby's wishes and grant software developpers a "source code
privilege" (as demanded by a study ordered by the german government but
never actually pursued by the german government nor mentioned in the
CEC/BSA directive proposal), this would hardly be enough.  It is bad
enough if a program can only be published in source form but not legally
used in most contexts.  Such a program can not be licensed under the GPL
or become a building block of a free software system.

We have been putting this demand on our agenda, see also

        http://swpat.ffii.org/analysis/

because we know that a lot of different demands must be tried (we don't
know which will succeed when).  But so far the patent lawyers are in
charge of the issue and they have taken care to protect their bandwagon,
which has been running for 10 (and to some extent 100) years on successful
mantras.  Once this mantra-machine is required to think, it may collapse,
which is why they don't react to any proposals or suggestions and just
keep reiterating false assertions.  Like The Greg, whose last reiteration
loop apparently still made some readers of this forum ask themselves
whether patents are perhaps better than they are.

-- 
Hartmut Pilch, FFII & Eurolinux Alliance              tel. +49-89-12789608
Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation       http://swpat.ffii.org/
120,000 signatures against software patents      http://www.noepatents.org/