[linux-audio-dev] Re: Patents on some Linux OS code

[Artem Baguinski]

Paul Davis <paul at linuxaudiosystems.com> writes:

>>They think that if there is no "producer" backing the product then they can 
>>attack the user as the guilty of the patent infraction, and I think that we 
>>will see more threats and trials because of that. This is something that is 
>>happening, not only my thoughs.
>
> it is *not* happening. its as simple as that. court cases based on s/w
> patents are very, very, very hard to find, for reasons i outlined
> earlier.
>
> so-called "intellectual property" cases are happening, but these are
> entirely different in that they are based on copyright and trademark
> and trade secret laws, which do not look anything like patent law. 

when I installed fedora core 2 there was no way to play, let alone
encode mp3 audio. i thought that was because mp3 is patented and free
implementations can't exist in US. would fedora.us have been sued if
they provided lame and mpg123 in the distribution?

-- 
Artem Baguinski:                         http://www.artm.org/
V2_Lab:                                  http://lab.v2.nl/
V2_ Organisation for the Unstable Media: http://www.v2.nl/