On Thursday 09 August 2007 14:43, Raj Mathur wrote:
On Thursday 09 August 2007 14:10, jtd wrote:
[snip] In the usa (and probably "as such" in India) he can patent some piece of drivel and pump it into the modem. then tieup with bsnl not to sue BSNL customers buying the modem. So if you bought a bsnl modem, demanded and recieved the code, then re-cross-compiled (or dd the rom binary) and pumped the code into your own design modem / 386box / whatever he can sue you.
I very much doubt if a court would uphold an action against you by a provider if you compile and use a piece of code that the provider himself supplied you with.
End users are patent licenced by the patent holder - not bsnl - for use and modification for self, not for down stream distribution. Bsnl does not sue, the patent holder sues - not you the enduser - but anyone else you happen to distribute to.
If they did, I'm getting busy patenting algorithm foo, embedding it into a piece of GPLv2 code and allowing everyone to download and use that code. 2 months later I'll sue them all for patent violation, make lots of money,
U cant sue if you own the patented code and distribute - that case is sortof covered in gplv2 - but perversely you can sue Rony if u gave the code to me and i gave it to Rony. When u distribute to me u also automatically give permission to me to use a patent but not to redistribute. So when i disitribute to Rony u can sue Rony. To make it a nice milking scheme u allow me to redistribute. So now i sell to Rony and u dont sue Rony. But if Rony gives DJ you can sue DJ. Since DJ cant ask me code. Rony can and i have to give the source to him.Rony can do everything he wishes with it except redistribute. although the gpl2 allows him to redsitribute to DJ, your patent is a sword on DJ's head.
unsubscribe from all mailing lists and go and live a life of luxury beyond my wildest dreams in the Himalayas.
you could do that without a lot of money just join up a monastery in bhutan ;-) (btw one karateka from India who used to train the usa marines did just that)