Subject: Re: IBM Patents
From: Bernd Petrovitsch <bernd@firmix.at>
To: Linux kernel <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.61.0501170842540.21983@chaos.analogic.com>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.61.0501170842540.21983@chaos.analogic.com>
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Organization: Firmix Software GmbH
Message-Id: <1105973138.28592.26.camel@tara.firmix.at>
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Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2005 15:45:38 +0100
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On Mon, 2005-01-17 at 08:44 -0500, linux-os wrote:
> Tue Jan 11 07:07:40 EST 2005
> 
> IBM has announced that it will provide free access to about

No, they only promise now to not sue anyone given the following
criteria. No one knows what happens in 5 years.

> 500 of its existing software patents to users and groups

They have ca. 40000 AFAIK. So 500 is 1,25 %.
And IBM is actually lobbying for patents so this is only a marketing
thing.

> working on open source software.
> 
>  	http://www.ibm.com/news/us/
> 
> Many of these patents relate to interoperability, communications,
> file-export protocols, and dynamic linking.

And almost all of them are pure software-patents and probably prior art.
Thus they are - at least in Europe - not relevant and actually illegal
if you believe in the current European patent law as defined by the
European Patent Convention (see ?52(2) for details).

	Bernd
-- 
Firmix Software GmbH                   http://www.firmix.at/
mobil: +43 664 4416156                 fax: +43 1 7890849-55
          Embedded Linux Development and Services

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