On Tue, Jan 08, 2008 at 10:05:50AM +0100, Jonas Öberg wrote:
On Tue, 8 Jan 2008 08:35:36 +0000 Rui Miguel Silva Seabra rms@1407.org wrote:
=> recognizing MS Software Patents in EU
I can see how you can make this connection, but I don't think it necessarily reflects reality. The EC is with no uncertainty aware of our position against software patents, and accepting this license does in no way change our opinion that granted patents on software should be invalidated and no new patents granted on the subject.
"Our" opinion doesn't count for them. They are creating "precedents" that recognise the validity of software patents.
If anything, accepting this license might be a recognision of patents in general, but it's not a recognision of software patents.
Oh really? Do you know of any other patents than software patents when you speak of file formats or communication protocols in digital media? :)
In fact, the agreement with Microsoft makes crystal clear in several places that the licensee is not waiving its right to contest the validity of the patents, and I'm quite sure this will happen at some point in time.
Which is why I wonder why no criticism of this came forward. Arguing that at least there's some information on protocols/file-formats in this form is just the same as arguing that at least OOXML gives some info about MS Word's file-format.
It's utterly irrelevant because there are more important issues behind these moves.
One of the things this court result brought is that «forget anti-trust if there are patents involved».
Rui