Also if someone with legal background can answer, I would like to put another question (maybe very obvious to some of you, but I send it anyway.. :-)) : - what is the status of "reverse engineering" in USA/EU nowadays? More specifically, in the context of the project coreboot, can we use information obtained reversing proprietary bioses/drivers (or even hardware.. :o)) safely or we risk unleashing hordes of IP lawyers on us?..
Florentin
PS: I know that this is shamelessly practiced in the (big) corporate world, but we (as "underdogs"..) can we dare?..
Quoting Joseph Smith joe@settoplinux.org:
On Fri, 19 Jun 2009 10:24:51 +0200, Florentin Demetrescu echelon@free.fr wrote:
Beware.. Question : if we (open source users/developpers) are using some information obtained from patents (not the complete patent but just some information as is the case here..), are we exposing to lawsuits of "patent infringement" if the patent holder is not open source friendly? Just my 2 euro-cents..
I don't thinks so, patent claims are public information. No one had to sign a NDA. It is not software and does not have copyrighted code it just explains how a harware process works. As long as we are NOT claiming to have invented the hardware process, that there is a patent on, it is ok.
Anyone with a legal back ground want to touch this?
-- Thanks, Joseph Smith Set-Top-Linux www.settoplinux.org
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