🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <GUMBY.91Mar3113623@Cygnus.COM> gumby@Cygnus.COM (David Vinayak Wallace) writes:
>    If you sell the code then you take your chances just like any other
>    business. If you give it away without charge there is no profit in
>    suing you is there?
> In fact, patentholders can sue people distributing material
> incorporating techniques covered by patents they hold.  While this is
> less likely to be an issue with, say, steelmaking, it is relevent to
> software, where a company may use a patent to try to lock onto a
> marketplace, and would sue to attempt to prevent the distribution of a
> free alternative.

Yes. ``Whether or not infringing article would have some commercial
usefulness without patented feature is irrelevant where it is clear that
patentee would have made sales of article had not defendant infringed.''
Huhges Tool Co. v. G. W. Murphy Industries, Inc., C.A.Tex. 1973, 491
F.2d 923.

On the other hand, a patent without proven commercial usefulness is
weaker in court than one with.

> (note by the way that it is difficult to use a patent to lock up a
> market becuase of the antitrust issues.

Hardly. In fact, patents are the easiest way to get strong monopolies.

> So software patents could prevent the spread of free software, even
> were it freely developed before the patent was issues (as long as it
> was after the patent was filed).

Or up to a year before. In fact, unless the developers can *prove* that
they conceived of the invention more than a year before the filing date,
they can still be screwed by the patent.

---Dan