[IronPython] Patent concerns

[Curt Hagenlocher]

On 6/1/07, M. David Peterson <xmlhacker at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 6/1/07, Curt Hagenlocher <curt at hagenlocher.org> wrote:
>
> > "Independent rediscovery" does not protect you from claims of patent
> > infringement, only from copyright infringement.
> >
>
> Unless I am misreading, it seems you are suggesting that the protection
> comes in the form of copyright, not patent, and therefore could present a
> problem.  Have I misinterpreted?
>

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that I want to contribute source code
to the "ZincPython" project.  There are two ways that my work could cause
legal problems: it might infringe on someone's patent, or it might be copied
wholesale from someone else's work.  For patent infringement, it doesn't
really matter where the code came from -- I wrote it, I copied it, I
channeled it from a 12,000-year-old programmer named Klaatu -- if it
infringes, it infringes.  In order for copyright violation to have happened,
on the other hand, I have to actually have had access to the code being
copied.

Some projects apparently try to protect themselves from *claims* of
copyright violation by asking that their donors refrain from looking at
similar or related (and usually competing) source code.

Now that I think about it, though, reading someone else's source code might
expose me to a clever idea that (unbeknownst to me) is patented -- thereby
increasing the risk that I inadvertently infringe on a patent when I
independently reimplement similar functionality.  I guess I'm just biased
against that idea because brilliant technique so rarely seems important to
me.

--
Curt Hagenlocher
curt at hagenlocher.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/ironpython-users/attachments/20070601/8baf3abb/attachment.html>