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[odecar at onvol.net]

I am Odette Caruana a maltese university student.  I am currently working on an assignment about open source patents and I am having a problem answering one of the questions. 

The question is : How software patents might affect the development of open source applications such as OpenOffice.?

I hope someone can help me.
I will appreciate any help.

Regards
Odette Caruana