Defensive Software Patents for Open Source Projects?

Posted by Cliff on Thursday January 9, 2003 @12:40AM from the protecting-your-code's-freedom dept.

jqh1 asks: "I'm the "inventor" of spamgourmet, a fairly un-obvious approach to spam prevention through auto-create/expire email addresses. I'm fully committed to keeping the software free for all to use. Recently, I've seen other 'patent pending' disposable email address services that are not immediately forthcoming about their own processes. I don't have the time or resources to monitor and challenge patent applications, but I'm afraid that if I ignore them, I'll regret it. Should I seek patent protection for this open source software? If so, is there a way to do it without losing all semblance of an open source project?"

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OT: spambot by den_erpel · 2003-01-09 04:09 · Score: 1, Offtopic

Just wondering (after I created an account)

what if some spambot has a rule that has
s/\w+\.(\d+)\.(.\w+)@spamgourmet.com/spamenab led\. 999\.$2@spamgourmet.com/g
would this mean the user is buggered?

--
Genius doesn't work on an assembly line basis. You can't simply say, "Today I will be brilliant."