Re: Question about Cocoa/Gnustep

[Gregory John Casamento]

Guys,

First a tutorial on what a Patent really is.   A patent is a limited monopoly
granted by the government on an invention.   An invention can, in this day and
age (unfortunately) be a process, software, or other mechanical contrivance.

A patent gives the holder the legal right to exclude persons from using his or
her invention.  Notice that I *do not* say it give that person the exclusive
right to use the invention.  There is a subtle difference.

When you own a patent it is *up to you* to find infringement and enforce it. 
This comes with a few caveats.  If you *know* that someone is infringing and
you do nothing about it, then you have failed to press your patent rights and
might loose your monopoly on the invention. 

With this understood and in mind, we proceed...

--- Marciano Siniscalchi <marciano@northwestern.edu> wrote:
> There are additional potential difficulties, though. Consider the Freetype 
> situation. The Truetype specification is "open" (i.e. relatively, if not 
> completely, documented). Anybody can write an original implementation; 
> however, Apple has patented certain algorithms related to hinting, so 
> strictly speaking a native bytecode interpreter for Truetype fonts cannot be 
> distributed (and deployed?) without first obtaining a license from Apple.

What was patented, in the case of TrueType is the "hinting" mechanism.  
FreeType got around this issue by coming up with an algorithm that doesn't rely
on these hints, so there is no infringement.

> In principle, Apple (or Sun, or other parties) may hold patents related to
> the implementation of aspects of the OpenStep specification, or 
> (more likely) of Cocoa-specific extensions.
>
> Does anybody have any direct info on this? 

I am aware of no patents which cover any of the extensions Apple has added.   

In this day and age worrying about patent infringment is sometimes silly, given
that the USPTO is so very careless about granting patents.

For instance: there is a patented spell checking algorithm which checks the
spelling of a word as the user types.   This is implemented in several Linux
wordprocessing programs, yet no one has sued.   You need to understand what
patents are really used for.

What patents are used for, mostly..
-----------------------------------
Companies like IBM who have HUGE (IBM has thousands of patents) patent
portfolios use them mostly for defense.  You'll notice that the four patents
the IBM is suing SCO over have mostly to do with simple things like storing
data to a mass storage device.  In one interview, an IBM exec was quoted as
saying that "SCO uses GUI interfaces and we've got a patent on that".  
Companies typically collect patent portfolios to protect themselves from
litigation.   

Some companies, unfortunately, do use them to extract license fees from small
businesses or block their competition.

Laches
------
What is Laches?  Laches is when a company has failed to press its patent rights
on someone they know is infringing.   Legally a company cannot practice
"selective enforcement" they must enforce the patent when they find
infringement or loose thier rights.

Apple knows about GNUstep and has known about us for a very long time.   We've
thusfar received no communication that GNUstep infringes in any way on any
Patent, Copyright or Trademark owned by Apple.   If we ever are notified, I can
assure you that the GNUstep team will act quickly to resolve any issues in that
regard.

BTW... I have an anti-patent petition (the site is not run by me, but the
petition is mine, so pay no attention to the ads :/) at
http://www.petitiononline.com/pasp01/petition.html

GJC

> M
> -- 
> Marciano Siniscalchi 
> Department of Economics  
> Northwestern University


=====
Gregory John Casamento -- CEO/President Open Logic Corp.


        
                
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