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Microsoft's Marshall Phelps On Patents And Linux
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft's Marshall Phelps says he is running 'a licensing shop, not a litigation shop.' Bill Gates's intellectual property guru talks to Brad Stone about Redmond's new emphasis on patents, why he can't license Microsoft IP to distributors of open source software -- and why he shouldn't be feared."
No they don't, that's Trademarks. Trademarks can be renewed, and have to be defended.
Patents cannot be renewed, are valid for 21 years after issuing (in the US), and can be selectively defended without any fear of losing the patent.
Copyright also is valid for a time period (but that keeps on getting extended by Disney&Co's hired congresscritters) and also does not *have* to be defended to remain valid.
The most important defenses against patents are more patents (big companies give each other rights to use each other's patents, something Open Source cannot do) or finding some reason for a patent to be declared invalid, either by finding Prior Art or by showing that a Patent is "obvious to a person skilled in the field".
No matter what, getting a patent declared invalid is not cheap.
I've got loads of GPL'ed stuff I've not given away to anyone. You don't have to give it away even if you're a developer - you're perfectly entitled to keep it in-house. However, if you *do* give it away, you have to make the source available.
Apart from that, the GPL only addresses copyright. If there are patent issues, you have to take care of those separately before you can use the code.