On 11/21/06, Andreas Jaeger wrote:

Silviu Marin-Caea writes:

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On Tuesday 21 November 2006 13:44, Dominique Leuenberger wrote:

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I would say that Microsoft checked their software and found out that they were infringing Novell Patents. For this reason they pushed to this agreement and are now happy they have their customers save.

Then shouldn't it have to read "At Microsoft we undertook our own analysis of __Novell's__ patent portfolio and concluded that it was necessary and important to create a patent covenant for customers of these products. We are gratified that such a solution is now in place."

It goes both directions: "Microsoft and Novell have agreed to disagree on whether certain open source offerings infringe Microsoft patents and whether certain Microsoft offerings infringe Novell patents."

So, this sounds to me as if there is saying "MS infringe" and Microsoft saying "Linux infringes" - and the other side disagrees...

If you murder somebody, you are (in most places) innocent until you are convicted of such a crime. Patent infringing is the same. There are a lot of patents that are very broad, but until determined by a court (or agreement) there is no infringement. Any talk about infringements is no different to talking about whether you 'think' somebody is innocent or not before a trial. It is just a belief, and in this regard Novell is no different to Microsoft. Of course Novell doesn't acknowledge patent infringement, doing so, basically makes it true, like an accused man confessing to a crime. The way I see this agreement is that the Patents held by each company will not be tested against the other's products. Just as an example: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.htm&r=104&p=3&f=G&l=50&d=PTXT&S1=microsoft&OS=microsoft&RS=microsoft is a patent for establishing a voip call from clicking a URL in a browser eg callto:555555 or SIP:somebody@sip.org and that being handled by an application. If there is similar functionality in SUSE using VOIP software, it does not mean that it is an infringement. In court this patent may very well be deemed invalid due to prior art, or it may be shown that what is claimed is not novel enough to be covered by a patent. What I have written before is that I don't think the agreement is such a big deal, it is the act of getting into bed with the masters of FUD that is going to hurt. Pflodo Peter Flodin --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org