[Sigia-l] RE: Software Patents and IA?

[Jonathan Baker-Bates]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: sigia-l-bounces at asis.org 
> [mailto:sigia-l-bounces at asis.org] On Behalf Of Surla,Stacy M.
> Sent: 06 July 2005 18:10
> To: sigia-l at asis.org
> Subject: [Sigia-l] RE: Software Patents and IA?
> 
> I guess this is copyright infringement not patent, but my 
> company made a policy decision to not promote the internal 
> use of open source software because of the SCO v IBM-Linux 
> case, and related.  Well, we still use Linux, but this policy 
> seems to have affected software acquisition and development 
> decisions.  For instance, we wind up doing things like 
> writing out own javascripts rather than using available ones, 
> and buying lots of Microsoft products.

Hmm. Sounds a bit screwed up to me. But still, if you widen the issue
out to "intellectual property" in general it seems to be the case that
there are huge theoretical risks when creating system designs that never
seem to manifest themselves in practice. Patents, on the other hand, do
seem to rear their heads Stateside quite a bit, and if they cover things
like business processes or "abstract" stuff that people like us could
come up with in our daily work, then that might be worrying.

Jonathan


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