RedHat and software patents

[Joerg Schilling]

>From: Loic Dachary <loic at gnu.org>

>http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.html&r=2&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1='molnar+ingo'.IN.&s2='red+hat'&OS=IN/%22molnar+ingo%22+AND+%22red+hat%22&RS=IN/%22molnar+ingo%22+AND+%22red+hat%22

>http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1='molnar+ingo'.IN.&s2='red+hat'&OS=IN/%22molnar+ingo%22+AND+%22red+hat%22&RS=IN/%22molnar+ingo%22+AND+%22red+hat%22

>	The embodiments of the present invention described are
>	implemented in a computing platform based on the computer
>	operating system commonly known as 'Linux' that is available
>	as open source directly over the Internet. Linux is also
>	available through various vendors who provide service and
>	support for the Linux operating system. Among these vendors
>	are Red Hat, Inc., of Research Triangle Park, N.C., the
>	assignee of the present invention.

I cannot see that the "inventor" is an RedHat employee, but...

The sourcecode definitely has now been published so it is covered 
by the GPL. For this reason, the author grants royalty free use
by anybody. He cannot earn money from this idea.

BTW: Red Hat in general is not very GPL friendly...

Some time ago, I made a proposal to include some (non-read hat) code
covered by GPL. The answer was: We are not allowed to include code that
has not been coded by Red Hat employees.

Jörg

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