FSFE Newsletter

Rui Miguel Silva Seabra rms at 1407.org
Tue Jan 8 09:30:02 UTC 2008


On Tue, Jan 08, 2008 at 10:05:50AM +0100, Jonas Öberg wrote:
> On Tue, 8 Jan 2008 08:35:36 +0000
> Rui Miguel Silva Seabra <rms at 1407.org> wrote:
> 
> > => recognizing MS Software Patents in EU
> 
> I can see how you can make this connection, but I don't think it
> necessarily reflects reality. The EC is with no uncertainty aware of
> our position against software patents, and accepting this license does
> in no way change our opinion that granted patents on software should be
> invalidated and no new patents granted on the subject.

"Our" opinion doesn't count for them. They are creating "precedents" that
recognise the validity of software patents.

> If anything, accepting this license might be a recognision of patents
> in general, but it's not a recognision of software patents.

Oh really? Do you know of any other patents than software patents when
you speak of file formats or communication protocols in digital media?
:)

> In fact, the agreement with Microsoft makes crystal clear in several
> places that the licensee is not waiving its right to contest the
> validity of the patents, and I'm quite sure this will happen at some
> point in time.

Which is why I wonder why no criticism of this came forward. Arguing
that at least there's some information on protocols/file-formats in this
form is just the same as arguing that at least OOXML gives some info
about MS Word's file-format.

It's utterly irrelevant because there are more important issues behind
these moves.

One of the things this court result brought is that «forget anti-trust
if there are patents involved».

Rui

-- 
Or is it?
Today is Pungenday, the 8th day of Chaos in the YOLD 3174
+ No matter how much you do, you never do enough -- unknown
+ Whatever you do will be insignificant,
| but it is very important that you do it -- Gandhi
+ So let's do it...?



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