[Opensim-dev] personal plea on patents

[Frank Nichols]

It's too late for that - and as someone pointed out, intentionally 
breaching a patent qualifies for triple damages. Attempts to "code fast" 
before the patent is issued would be interpreted as exactly that.

Unfortunately, the ball is in the patent office's court now. Prior art 
can be submitted in hopes that the patent applications will not be 
approved, but other than that the way forward - assuming the patents are 
issued - is a painful process of finding ways to implement OS without 
infringing, and of course you will never know if you are successful 
until the matter is settled in court.

This is a sad day for all the people that have invested so much time and 
work and passion into OS.

Frank

On 2/3/2010 11:40 AM, Daniel Smith wrote:
> Excellent post.  I wonder what people think of the approach of creating
> "prior art" in the near term.  Think of what is likely to be needed,
> and get rough implementations/prototypes out there.  I am thinking
> of Diva's point of "code fast".  It makes me think "put lots of stakes
> in the obvious ground now".
>
> On Wed, Feb 3, 2010 at 9:15 AM, <diva at metaverseink.com 
> <mailto:diva at metaverseink.com>> wrote:
>
>     In the light of recent events, I want to make this plea explicit and
>     widely distributed:
>     http://www.metaverseink.com/blog/?p=30
>
>     No need to panic, the project is not in danger. But it became clear to
>     me that we need to raise awareness of this issue, so that people
>     in this
>     community stop and think before they file patents to please investors
>     and managers.
>     _______________________________________________
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>     Opensim-dev at lists.berlios.de <mailto:Opensim-dev at lists.berlios.de>
>     https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/opensim-dev
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> Daniel Smith - Sonoma County, California
> http://daniel.org/resume
>
>
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>    

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