[Mageia-dev] Mirror layout

Sat Dec 11 11:08:50 CET 2010

2010/12/11 andre999 <andr55 at laposte.net>:
+>
+> Software (or anything else) only infringes on a patent if a court says so.
+
+I am not talking about being sued for patent infringement, I may have
+said it not clearly enough: I am talking about distributing (not
+writing) software which is already protected by patents in a country
+where software patents are acknowledged.
+
+>> This is not the question because we are not talking about costly court
+>> trials.
+>
+> The damages claimable are in proportion to the loss the claimant can
+> demonstrate.  So even if they win (at least partially), will it be worth the
+> effort ?
+
+Again, we are not talking about court trials about the writing of the
+software and thus infringing some patent, I am talking about
+distributing software which is already known to be patented software.
+I am not talking about sease & desist letters with a bill for the
+lawyer's work. Not about any punishment fees or whatever you have to
+pay after you loose a court trial.
+
+>>> "cease and desist" letters are just warnings.  Any attached "bill" would
+>>> only have effect if validatated by a court.
+>>
+>> Yes, I can refuse to pay, then it goes to court. And with an existing
+>> law which protects patented software, who do you think will win?
+>
+> Again, until it decided by a court, it is only an unvalidated claim.
+> In the U.S., rarely does a patent holder win enough to justify their legal
+> costs.  If they win.  A lot of the costs are pretrial preparation, to
+> develop a case.
+
+Tell that to the senders of thousands of such letters, each with a 100
+USD bill attached.
+Again, we are NOT talking about big companies sueing other companies
+for patent infringement.
+
+> These warnings are a tactic to scare the naive, to a large degree.
+> Lawyers and others do it everywhere.  Did you realise that these warnings
+> generally contain a statement to ensure that they can't be used in court
+> against the author ?  Because the usually excessive demands will work
+> against them in court ?
+
+Is that so in the US? It is different in Germany. The demands have
+been excessive but the highest court decided that these fees should
+only cover the cost of the lawyer who sends this cease & desist
+letter. It's around 100 Euros maximum IIRC.
+
+
+Daniel Kreutzer wrote:
+> If every developer on this world who writes open source software would care about such patents, than nobody would be able to program because you have to fear that a big company like Microsoft will have a patent on some part of code. But as you mentioned in previous posts, only such people with lots of money will have problems.
+
+I did not write anything about developers. I wrote about maintainers
+of mirrors who are distributing patented software in a country where
+such patents are acknowledged. That's a totally different picture.
+
+-- 
+wobo
+