[Bf-committers] Blender Foundation - softwarefreedom.org

[Campbell Barton]

Knowingly violating IP is a worse then doing so by accident (if you're
getting sued for IP infringement), given the state of US software
patents, blender probably violates loads of patents - which themselves
are probably invalid or could be shown to have proof of prior art.

So the worst thing you can do is to find patents blender violates and
post them on this list - because then we cant claim ignorance.
According to Bradley Kuhn this happened to GCC and was a real pain
because once posted they could not publicly ignore it.

+1 for "Just stay away from it!"

On Mon, Jul 25, 2011 at 2:16 AM, Ton Roosendaal <ton at blender.org> wrote:
> Hi Douglas,
>
> Ehh, let me rephrase -- tricky bizz this :) -- simply said:
>
> Although law demands you to "know the law" (you cannot claim ignorance
> of it), the law doesn't demand you to know all patents or all
> registrations of IP. Unless you evidently investigated it, or should
> have known by common publications in your area of interest. Etc.
>
> I'm not a lawyer! Just stay away from it!
>
> -Ton-
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Ton Roosendaal  Blender Foundation   ton at blender.org    www.blender.org
> Blender Institute   Entrepotdok 57A  1018AD Amsterdam   The Netherlands
>
> On 24 Jul, 2011, at 18:04, Ton Roosendaal wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I'm not talking about looking at info, but mentioning it implies you
>> take responsibility for that.
>>
>> -Ton-
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Ton Roosendaal  Blender Foundation   ton at blender.org
>> www.blender.org
>> Blender Institute   Entrepotdok 57A  1018AD Amsterdam   The
>> Netherlands
>>
>> On 24 Jul, 2011, at 16:26, Knapp wrote:
>>
>>>> - Don't mention (nor do) investigation of public patent databases
>>>> ever, unless you already evidently knew it had to be done.
>>>> Thanks!
>>>>
>>>> -Ton-
>>>
>>> Why? What is wrong with looking at public info?
>>> Thanks!
>>>
>>> --
>>> Douglas E Knapp
>>>
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>>> with open source software!
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>>>
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>>> http://douglas.bespin.org/tcm/ztab1.htm
>>> Please link to me and trade links with me!
>>>
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-- 
- Campbell