[Opensim-dev] Violating the GPL by looking (Re: Voice Module)

[Kyle Hamilton]

http://freepatentsonline.com allows the search of patent applications,
 but I don't really know how to search them.


 On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 10:56 AM, dan miller <danbmil99 at yahoo.com> wrote:
 >
 >  > The only possible monkeywrench is patent infringement, but I don't
 >  > know if any patent filing has actually occurred on anything that
 >  > Linden's employees may have invented.  (I can't find any, but that
 >  > doesn't mean anything.)
 >
 >  That's exactly why a big-company attorney would give this sort of advice.
 >  We can't know if there are any Linden patent filings out there, or what
 >  Linden's stance might be.  Therefore, the big companies who are interested
 >  in opensim (I have no doubt that an opinion from one of their overpaid hacks
 >  is the genesis of this 'rule') are taking an absurdly cautionary stance by
 >  insisting that no opensim programmers can ever be exposed to the SL viewer
 >  source.

 A patent infringement is an infringement whether it's known or not.
 Remember, a patent is the antithesis of a trade secret -- 'inevitable
 disclosure' only applies if you're trying to keep the knowledge
 secret, and to get a patent you must inevitably disclose what you're
 trying to get a patent on.

 Since they released the knowledge under the GPL, since they published
 the expressive work that is the viewer source code and granted
 everyone in the world the right to read, comprehend, change,
 recompile, and redistribute with the caveat that the source for their
 changes must be distributed as well... it's not a trade secret.  They
 gave up any kind of trade secret protection when they did that.  This
 means that there's no possible "inevitable disclosure" claim that I
 can see going forward.  (IANAL.)


 >  What is patently ridiculous (ha!) about all this is, the problem could still
 >  exist if Linden released their viewer under a BSD license.  They could still
 >  have a patent; they could still claim 'residual information' or 'inevitable
 >  disclosure' with respect to programmers who confess to having read said
 >  code.    The reason GPL rears its ugly head is that it explicitly states
 >  that you can't let your patents restrict other's GPL rights.  Note however
 >  that letting some of these patent rights slip into a BSD project *does not*
 >  restrict anyone's right to use the GPL code, nor does it go afowl of GPL
 >  because there is no code copying!  (I shoulda been a lawyer..)

 patent law and the application thereof is not the same as trade secret
 law and the application thereof is not the same as trademark law and
 the application thereof is not the same as copyright law and the
 application thereof.  There are limited rights, of different types,
 granted to each class.  There is no single umbrella of "intellectual
 property" that you can point to and say anything about, other than
 "it's a limited right of ownership to something which can be perceived
 and understood."


 >  What makes it triply ridiculous is that a lawsuit could easily transpire
 >  anyway, with a claim that some programmer is lying about having read the
 >  code.  Inevitable Disclosure involves trade secrets and confidentiality
 >  agreements, where it is clear who had access and who didn't.  Having
 >  programmers (whose r/l identities we often don't even know) pledge on IRC or
 >  email that they never looked at code that is right out there for anyone to
 >  anonymously download, is very unlikely to hold up in a court case.

 There are no "trade secrets" here.  I'm pretty sure there aren't any
 confidentiality agreements that Linden holds its employees to -- and I
 have a couple of friends employed by Linden.

 I /have/ looked at the source code for the viewer.  I've modified it
 for proof-of-concept of some major intellectual-property ickiness, and
 mitigation thereof.  This means that I can't submit patches to
 OpenSimulator (never mind that opensim is designed to operate on the
 back-end, and the viewer's supposed to interoperate with it
 independently; opensim's written in C#, while the viewer's written in
 C++, which prevents code from 'just working' if it's directly copied
 anyway) under the current rules.


 >  So the whole thing remains... just silly, IMSHO.

 What's really silly?  The fact is that the only thing that Linden
 could possibly compel as part of a lawsuit to declare it under the GPL
 is to compel the publication of the source code by anyone who's
 distributed binaries.  There's not even a breath that it's under any
 license that would require anyone who gets the source, changes it, and
 runs servers based on their changed sources to have to distribute the
 binaries they run or the source code that they used to build those
 binaries.

 -Kyle H