[License-discuss] Disclosure of patents by Apache projects

[jonathon]

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On 24/05/2015 21:54, Lawrence Rosen wrote:

>At least in the open source community, let's please take advantage of
this relief provided us by the CAFC in Seagate. Open source engineers
should be free to read and write whatever they want about patents. It
can't hurt.

For programmers, the issue is when the final, limiting clause of the
patent ^1 is akin to the following:

«It should be understood that the routines, steps, processes, or
operations described herein may represent any module or code sequence
that can be implemented in software or firmware. In this regard, these
modules and code sequences can include commands or instructions for
executing the specific logical routines, steps, processes, or operations
within physical components. It should further be understood that two or
more of the routines, steps, processes, and/or operations described
herein may be executed substantially simultaneously or in a different
order than explicitly described, as would be understood by one of
ordinary skill in the art.

...

It should be emphasized that the above-described embodiments are merely
possible examples of implementations, merely set forth for a clear
understanding of the principles of the present disclosure. Any process
descriptions or blocks in flow diagrams should be understood as
representing modules, segments, or portions of code which include one or
more executable instructions for implementing specific logical functions
or steps in the process, and alternate implementations are included in
which functions may not be included or executed at all, may be executed
out of order from that shown or discussed, including substantially
concurrently or in reverse order, depending on the functionality
involved, as would be understood by those reasonably skilled in the art
of the present disclosure. Many variations and modifications may be made
to the above-described embodiment(s) without departing substantially
from the spirit and principles of the present disclosure. Further, the
scope of the present disclosure is intended to cover any and all
combinations and sub-combinations of all elements, features, and aspects
discussed above. All such modifications and variations are intended to
be included herein within the scope of the present disclosure, and all
possible claims to individual aspects or combinations of elements or
steps are intended to be supported by the present disclosure. »

In as much as I've come across at least half a dozen patents, whose
final clause is what I consider to be a very close paraphrase of that
wording, especially the last two or three sentences, the only thing that
Seagate does, is imply that any alleged infringement might not meet the
requirements for "willful infringement", and hence not subject to triple
damages.

It still doesn't protect the programmer who implements something,
without having a clue that the USPTO granted a patent on something that
is vaguely similar to what was implemented, and hence, potentially
infringing on a patent whose final, limiting clause, is the overarching
reach of the last five sentences from the patent that I quoted here.


^1: For some dumb reason, I didn't write down the patent number this
specific example came from. (In the blog in which I rant against this
specific patent, I list four or five patent numbers of other things that
I consider to be non-inventions, but the USPTO duly granted a patent on.
)

I am not a lawyer.
This is not legal advice.

I'm only the guy who has been threatened with lawsuits for patent
violations, copyright violations, and other intellectual property
violations, by parties who have never seen the allegedly infringing
vapourware.

jonathon
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