Slashdot Mirror
Patents Role in US/AU Gov't Use of Open Source?
An anonymous reader asks: "How do governments (esp. US and Australia) deal with possibility of a patent lawsuit from some company against a specific OSS product, which might be deployed by a given government department? Is there any danger for various (government or not for that matter) agencies being told 'not to use this or that software from now on' because some commercial company might be winning the patent battles in court against this particular piece of software?
I can see how a small business may take such a risk, but government agencies in the US and Australia could be put off by possibility, since the costs associated with migrating to open source and then back would be rather extreme (note that we are not talking about Europe which has different take on Software Patents and consequently Munich case is not really a strong example in the US/AU context). Personally I do not like software patents and think that they only inhibit software development processes, but how would Slashdot community reason for government-wide adoption of OSS in view of possible trouble with patents?"
Imminent Domain on Intellectual Property
Anonymous Coward writes "Once again I woke up today and found that I was hungry. This happens nearly every day. I know there must be something I can do about it, but I have been unable to find anything at Source Forge to help me. So my question to the gigantic Slashdot brain trust is this: What do you do when you are hungry and more importantly, is it open source? If it is not OSS, are there any copyright or patent issues that need to be dealt with? Also, is Google or Apple involved in any way? One more question: What degree should I get?"
...the one with more lawyers will win.
And the Government of the United States of America has a HELL of a lot more lawyers than any corporation.
What's the difference? If someone were to sue a commercial product and subsequently had it pulled from the market, wouldn't the government have to stop using it also?
The sooner they recognize that the same liability exists with closed source the sooner they will realize that the software patent system is at fault.
Please sign petition to restore sanity to our banking system!!!
http://financialpetition.org/
Don't tell them that now! Let them first adopt OSS and later adapt the laws to it.
Seriously, watch the armchair lawyers come out in droves with the "IANAL, but" posts.
Slashdot should leave the legal questions to real lawyers. Let this guy go talk to somebody who actually knows something, instead of some know-it-all schmuck on the Internet.
Why are you calling yourself an idiot?
OSS has no greater chance of being the target of a patent, or copyright, lawsuit than closed source software. In fact, any organisation can view the source and make their own risk assessment; something you can't do with closed source software.
They walk into a hanger, and see that Nasa and the military has assembled a drill that looks amazingly like something he had come up with..
Bruce Willis: "What, did you raid the patent office and steal my designs?"
The Man: "Yep"
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
When it comes to goverments they will always win any battle, at least when it comes from midle-east europe.
Think like a hacker, act like a hacker, but never become a hacker !
against either government?
If you're going to sue the govt, you'd better have a lot of money. If you're a competitor of open source bringing the suit, how does winning improve your chances of future business with the govt?
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Software patents are a grave threat regardless of whether the software is Free or not.
The only real difference is that a large company who is the target of a patent suit can usually buy enough lawyers to prevent a patent from actually taking effect. But there's no guarantee of that.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
if i had modpoints, i would mod you up, for great justice & wtfux.org
They tell you this in high school criminal law. The US Government has immunity from lawsuits unless it waives its immunity. In other words, it's immune to lawsuits. Google, and paying attention in class, are your friends.
*De gozaru!*
Aliens should start filing patents and put Area 51 out of business.
The U.S. Government? Using Open Source Software? Umm...maybe you don't follow U.S. corpolitics?
Going back to school for entry-level jobs?
military action of course!
This guy is way out there
Surely any legal problems that may occur would only do so between the software vendor and the patient holder? It would definately be morally wrong (even if not legally) to stop an organisation using a piece of software which has been in the public domain?
I always hear talk about how M$ is getting a new US Patent but are they effective in Canada?
Cheers,
RoadkillBunny
You need to go with Apple. Of all the implementations you're considering, Apple will fill your hunger needs best and by using it daily, it will keep unsolicited email from doctors away.
AFAIK you can't sue the US government without its permission. At least not in US federal court. They do give their permission often however. But if they really wanted to they could violate GPLs and EULAs left and right and just not let anyone sue them for it.
I don't think it's anything to worry about though. The real worry is the government wasting taxpayer money on proprietary software and also using closed formats in an "open" government.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Seriously, watch the armchair lawyers come out in droves with the "IANAL, but" posts.
Few things are sexier than the I ANAL, butt posts!
The answer to this question is so obvious. From a legal definition: A doctrine precluding the institution of a suit against the sovereign [government] without its consent.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
what a stupid question. how do they deal with the same thing in case of commercial software? why is there a difference?
Sitting Walrus Blog
The US Government is immune from patent infringement suits ... but the patent holder can file an action for reasobable royalties in the Court of Claims ... but no fun stuff like triple damages or attorney fees.
Parent means to write "eminent domain," which is the legal theory under which the government can condemn property and forcibly purchase it "for the common good."
n ame=ViewWeb&articleId=9237
So far, there is no such thing as eminent domain for intellectual property. In fact, the Supreme Court ruled that a state may not break patents in Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Educ. Expense Bd. v. College Sav. Bank (527 U.S. 627, 119 S.Ct. 2199)
That's not to say that that policy could change, however. This article explains: http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Generally, it is a good idea to avoid picking fights with the people that control all the money, guns, courts, and jails, and are the also the only ones that are enforcing your "Intellectual Property Rights" in the first place. So when the judge tells you "Let's see, your asking me to rule in your favor on something that will cost the goverment billions... that would be the SAME government that is paying my salary?!?" you can pretty much predict what the outcome will be...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
*That's not to say that the policy *could not* change...
Not only do they have an assload of lawyers, they have done their homework. They wouldn't touch it if they weren't POSITIVE they were going to be able to use it without the risk of a lawsuit.
I'm not a troll, but I play one on Slashdot.
IANAL, I am however 6 months away from a law degree in Australia and I am currently studying IP law. With regard to patents, the government has what is called a "crown prerogative", that term actually applies to copyrights but the substance is similar. The idea is that the government can take a patented invention, use it for the purposes of government and all they are accountable to the patentee for is a fee for that use that they can either agree to with the patentee AFTER the exploitation or have set by a court. While this still is not an ideal result, the major point is NO DAMAGES, and they don't just have to pay whatever the patentee wants.
as using proprietary software
... is that the truth of the nature of software will have to come to a head. When it does then it will be obvious that software is not of a patentable nature, but rather of a nature that we humans have both a right and duty to improve upon. That of "abstraction creation and use".
The current problem is one of neith side really wanting to be honest about the nature of software, for that would mean programming would become easy enough to do that most anyone can, and regardless of their knowledge and time constraints. When this happens of will be common and far from "non-obvious" the practice of programming, as it is in using a decimal system calculator today.
In the mean time, due to Computer science detours via money carrots and the vested interest of the current programming industry you can expect all possible tactics of beating around teh bush, avoiding the truth, etc.
Like jailing Galelio for speaking the truth, witch hunts etc... all because there are those who do not want to see the honest reality of the nature of programming.
Programming is the act of automating complexity, typically made up of previously done automations, and all for the purpose of providing a simplified interface to the functional complexity so that the user of it may use it over and over.
The very objective of programming is to automate whatever..... including programming itself.
Its just a matter of the pimple of dishonesty to come to a head and pop.
From Microsoft loses appeal to limit damage awards:
A jury had told Microsoft to pay Chicago-based Eolas Technologies $521 million for infringement. Yesterday an appeals court let stand its earlier decision that upheld the infringement finding and ruled that Microsoft can be forced to pay damages based on overseas sales of software. Microsoft still gets a new trial to argue its claim that the patent is invalid.
Rulings like this will lead to more outsourcing. After all, if MS had coded IE entirely in India, and shipped non-US copies from there, this wouldn't even be an issue.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
We see Apple has a very small portion of the supermarket.
Anonymous Cowards have a void inside that they call hunger. They feel it almost daily. This hunger calls for action. And with the right tools and a little help, they'll make this hunger more than an opportunity to post; they'll make filling it their life. This is just one of the infinite possibilities that inspires us to create software that helps Anonymous Cowards reach thier limited potential.
Your Potential. Our Passion.
"A key statutory element of the Government's patent policy, 28 U.S.C. ? 1498 has been construed as a compulsory licensing provision in the nature of eminent domain. It permits the Government or another party acting on its behalf to use any U.S. patent--even without the patentee's consent--and limits the patentee's remedy for infringement to a suit against the United States in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims for a reasonable royalty."
Whoever posted this question could just as easily be an OSS opponent -- someone in the employ of Microsoft, for instance. At any rate, this kind of question is basically FUD. After all, patents are blind and affect commercial software products just the same as they do their OSS counterparts. Remember that Microsoft itself is constantly in court fighting off patent infringement lawsuits. Lucky for them that they have lots of lawyers, but so do governments... especially the US government.
...it's a doossey.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
... because as the parent correctly pointed out, there is a special statute in the US (28 USC 1498) for getting compensation for government use of patented inventions.
It's worth pointing out one feature of this special regime: there are no injunctions available to make the government stop: it's a money issue. So even if a patent holder could legally stop the rest of the OSS world -- hopefully that won't arise -- it couldn't stop the government.
In other countries there are similar special regimes for government use of patented inventions.
On the other hand, the scope of 'government' needs to be checked out in each national case, to check whether it covers publicly-owned services or the activities of municipalities, if these are the focus of the question -- the answer on that point clearly can't be assumed without a check.
-wb-
Usually in these kind of lawsuits ... the one with more lawyers will win.
But when when governments are involved, it's irrelevant.
If a patent liability becomes a nuisance, governments everywhere (including those of the US and Australia) simply claim sovereignty as a means of giving someone abroad the finger, or they claim national interest as a means of silencing internal claims. The latter especially is extremely common.
Governments and politicians may be the scum of the earth, but in this case, patent holders claiming rights over ideas are the worse scum.
So far, there is no such thing as eminent domain for intellectual property
Which is bizarre, since the state can deprive a person of his home under the doctrine, but not IP, which can be duplicated.
I guess if you really think about it, it kind of makes sense though. People use their homes to live in, and if the state needs the land for a highway, they're supposed to pay a fair market price. The thing about "intellectual property" is the primary thing you do with it is sell it or license it's use. So I guess in theory rights to the "property" should be for sale, so the government could just buy them in some form if it needs them.
Of course, this ignores the phenomenon of the "technology firm", which sells nothing and makes money by suing.
Finally, "Intellectual Property" is one of those "have you stopped beating your wife" frame-the-debate terms. If an idea can be owned, then the government should pay for its use. But there is another view that patents are just monopolies granted on the exploitation of ideas for the public good -- like the monopolies granted to the water company or electric company. In that case, the government could simply exempt public uses of an idea from the patent monopoly.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
OSS is less exposed to IP claims risks than is proprietary source. Apart from their relative openness, they're equally likely to include proscribed code. But OSS code can be searched by anyone (including suspicious IP owners), and has better code "pedigree" records, also searchable by anyone. Patents are an old form of open source: patented devices are published in enough detail to allow anyone to be sure they're not infringing, before they use a design. OSS under licenses like the GPL are a decentralized version of that publication, without the restrictions on further using the protected property (except so far as to retain that viral, open license).
So a better question is "how does an org protect itself from IP interference with IP upon which it depends?", and a good answer is "use OSS instead of proprietary".
--
make install -not war
Red Hat is an approved distribution (I've seen a CFD cluster running it). The NSA contributes to SELinux.
The big problem of the government using OSS is that often the goverment needs to distribute black box code and the distribution clauses of the GPL et alia get to be bothersome. So then you get to have fun with what the term "distribute" means, in context of the government and it's subcomponents, it's contractors, THEIR subcomponents and subcontractors, etc. "If you are my agent or employee, acting in my interests at my direction, and I give you something, is that a distribution within the meaning of the GPL provisions? (please say "No") What if I give it to a sister agency?"
And plenty of people inside the government run on a budget. They just tend to be huge when compared to industry. But it is still a budget that has to be managed cost effectively.
Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
It should be "Patent's role...."
Actually, I had thought about this a bit when designing my HTPC/PVR. If one person can build their own thing or write their own software that falls under a patent, and be totally legal in doing so, wouldn't it be justifiable to say that using an open source piece of software is much the same? The damages incurred to the company with the patent are the same, as they didn't get a sale, but nobody has "stolen" that sale, from a legal standpoint, because it's simply someone else benefitting from freely available work. For instance, if I build my friend a HTPC/PVR, TiVo can't sue either of us (if it held a patent for such a thing). If I build all of my friends HTPC/PVRs and they all pay me and I profit, I still am in legal standing.
I would think that Open Source could be the same thing on a much larger scale, even between companies, because no profit is being made. In instances like MySQL dual licensing, I don't know how well it would work, but for free software, I don't see how it would be an issue.
This forum Sig is licensed under the LGPL.
Regardless of whether the Goverments can be sued or not, in an instance such as this, particularly here in Australia I think they would be using the "we could be sued" line as an excuse not to migrate. Firstly, with the M$ propaganda they probably believe switching to OSS will cost more in the long run and secondly because they want to keep up appearences that they have shot themselves in the foot as much as they have the rest of the country by accepting the US IP laws as part of the "FTA."
I do believe that the Australian Capital Territory Govt has introduced legislation that calls for any new projects to look at OSS alternitives first in all territory related matters. However, being a territory and not a state, the federal government has the power to veto this law at any time.
It is a sad state of affairs that so much of the tax payers money is being used to pay for software licences, when there are free open alternatives. Particularly when in numerous cases they are using off the shelf products that aren't quite what they need but are the closest thing on offer, resulting in hacks and work arounds that are costing more money in govenment employee's wages.
But hey, it's only the tax payer and most of them think that Windows is the best, most secure and most cost effective operating system anyway, so what's the problem?!
The issue is not one of open source, since the exact same risk exists in proprietary software (actually, if you look into the issue, it appears that closed-source software presents a higher risk.
Also, in the US at least, the goverment reserves the right to decide whether or not it may be sued. The US government may simply choose to "opt-out" of the litigation.
Lets say that, with people being people, there would be just as much copying of code in both worlds (OSS and closed). But then, remind yourself of the fact that OSS is open; everybody can see what you used and how it's structured (look at the CherryOS debacle)...so OSS has quite a big, legit and pretty much unsurmountable reason to not be copying code.
/. the wrong question...the question you should be asking is 'why did I post a story on /. comparing OSS and closed software, with a question partaining to something (copyright infringment) OSS has inherently no problem with?'
/cows FUD?
Then look at closed source software; you can't see the code! So I'd say that almost per definition closed software has a greater amount of legal liability than OSS; OSS shows and bares all, closed doesn't. People being people, the guys who can hide will hide.
So it looks to me like you're asking
Are you feeding us
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
Cliff, meet The Angry Flower. The Angry Flower, meet Cliff. Cliff, The Angry Flower is going to tell you a little about our friend, The Apostrophe. Enjoy.
Actually, since the plural of patents is needed here, it should be "Patents' role...".
strangley though, international trade law provides an escape for violating pattens durring emergencies. Canada recently used/abused this for some drug pattens. I asume that any government can make the laws work in thier favor to some extent. If the US should want, they could probably manipulate thing much the same way.
"national security and a state of emergency" should get around it enough.
And most important of all, in the US, the government gets to decide if it wants to allow itself to be sued.
A Microsoft/SCO PR flack asks: "How can I use public forums to help prevent governmental organizations from diverting taxpayer dollars from our coffers? How do governments (esp. US and Australia) deal with legal blackmail that might prevent them from using a specific OSS product, which might be deployed by a given government department? Can I create the perception of danger within various (government or not for that matter) agencies so that they'll be told 'not to use this or that software from now on' because of some virtually non-existant threat of patent battles in court going against this particular piece of software? We've already locked in small business, so they don't count. But, government agencies in the US and Australia have enough clout and a different business rationale, so I need to convince them that they'll get seriously screwed over (note that we haven't rolled the EU on s/w patents, yet). I'm really not a paid flunky for Microsoft/SCO, really, so you show me your FOSS evangelist "play book" that I won't use to craft a workaround in my astroturfing projects?"
Luke, help me take this mask off
OSS has a wonderful resistance to lawsuits in redundancy - multiple items developed independently make it such that it is unlikely that ALL open-source solutions to an issue be susceptible to any given suit. Furthermore, the incomparable ingenuity and swiftness of the open-source community mean that any code found to be in violation has a relatively high probability of being quickly changed (one reason that SCO was so reluctant to identify the specific Linux source "in violation of" their copyright).
Also, should the government adopt OSS, it can always shrewdly deny software patents it believes might lead to legitimate suits against it.
Of course, as was pointed out by others above, it is doubtful that the government would adopt OSS in the forseeable future because... well... do any of us doubt that Micro$oft has the money to buy, among other things, our responsible civic representatives?
They slap an "Imminent Domain" sticker on it and keep right on rolling.
Drop me a line at:
Key ID: 0x54D1D809
And move all your software operations to Cuba.
Or, move the whole government to Cuba. I'm sure 48% of the country wouldn't mind that at all...
The space unintentionally left unblank.
If I'm not mistaken, there was an obscure US law that allowed transferral of patent to the government without any compensation to the authors.
I read about some cases where DOD used it.
---
Hmm. Couldn't find any reference to it in google under 30 seconds. May I stand corrected?
Bullshit! Prove it.
Agent Orange cost them at least 1.57 ass-loads of cash.
American with Disabilities act.
You're wrong.
First there's the article about how Adobe is afraid to put automatic whitebalance compensation for Nikon RAW format into Photoshop because *they* are afraid of the DMCA.. Now the US/AU governments are afraid of using OSS because of the possibility of patent lawsuits because of laws *they* enacted (in theory anyway.. in reality, the USPTO and whatever AU equivalent kind of have minds of their own.. Not to mentio how the WTO figures into all this..)
"Caught in their own web" is how I'd put it.. Hilarious, isn't it?
What, oh what will future historians say about the 1990's to ??'s with regard to IP patents?
Introducing the NGGPL, the GPL that allows you to avoid exploitation by your government, making it illegal for them to use your software.
They're always really good at showing you some previous contract you never signed (they like to call them laws) that binds you for life, aren't they?
Why not just let them know how we feel about being manipulated and exploited our whole lives by banning them from using what we produce in our own time?
"Sorry, but ignorance of the fact that each installation by a government worker or department costs $50,000 is no excuse - this contract already existed and you accepted it just by being a citizen of this country.
We put a few tiny words into a ill-reputed tabloid one weekday - it's public knowledge. We voted on it but you weren't there, sorry."
Would it be possible? I'd love to see the backlash on both sides as they realised that they really don't like OR trust each other. (At least, the government would be surprised.)
Aaron.
It's OK Bender, there's no such thing as 2.
They only need to change de IP law and they can without problem, they are one that make the laws.
PD.Sorry for my bad english
...I didn't realize all of this wonderful open source software that I was using was closed source. Apache, Linux, Mambo, MySQL and many more. Get out into the real world, open source software is being used, you just have to know where to look. The reason holding a lot of it back isn't just the managers (just finished talking about patents with my manager an hour or so ago), but a lot of perceptions and users. We could switch to Linux tomorrow. Our tech support department would also go on a killing spree after answering the calls from everyone. Our closed source document management system died this afternoon too. We're discussing problems with not only the fact that its closed source, but the fact that it doesn't work for what we need. Scratch that, the users don't use it properly. Much better.
I always wondered where this setting was...
And that's not to say Australia could give a flying fuck about US' Supreme Court's ruling.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
The legislative provisisons cited above contain the specific law that applies to the use of patented inventions by the Crown and its agencies, and can be found on ComLaw.
Oh, and to all those IANALs blabbing about sovereign immunity: go and get an education. The State and its major agencies (the legislature, courts of record, and the Crown or ministers exercising the prerogative powers of the Crown) are immune in the exercise of the particular powers that are or were traditionally exercised by the sovereign (e.g. enacting legislation, issuing judgments in legal disputes, or declaring war), but that doesn't give any government official (including the person in whom the personality of the Crown is currently vested) licence to go around killing, maiming, looting, etc, as if they were above the law.
Now Government may say congratulations for investing - innovating whatever, and also pick up fees for the mental retards in the patent office.
But if Government thinks its a bad patent as it stifles there chioce to buy 'thing' then they dont buy it.
So the result is this, you invested in a product and peice of paper that is not selling. This case actually happened to a client of ours in England.
Send Peter Clifford Francis Macrae comdoms to 23 Bedford St, St.Neots, PE19 1AX, England
- Pay up
- Switch
- Fight the claim in court
- Use their powers as the government to ignore it
- Take insurance or demand an indemnity from their supplier when buying software (obviously this should be done before a claim is brought)
I really can not see why you think that this is a problem specific to open source. Governments (and most large corporations) are not going to use a free download for anything critical. They will buy from a supplier and the legal relationships between the customer, the supplier and third parties making patent claims is going to be the same for both open and closed source software.The only difference using open source might make is that if the supplier pulls the product as a result of the claim, the government can still do a deal with the patent holder and continue deploying and using the product. With closed source the supplier it would have to be replaced more quickly as even urgent updates (such as security updates) could not be done once support for the product was discontinued (OK there might be a deal done, but its a lot less likely as it requires the agreement of three parties rather than two).
Assuming Aussie law is something like the law over here, then the Government probably could apply for a Compulsory Purchase Order on the patent rights. CPOs have been used in the past to obtain land necessary for various projects deemed to be In The Greater Public Interest {e.g. the Channel Tunnel Rail Link which runs through Kent}. Although CPOs have traditionally been applied to land, the reason for this has been simply that movable property doesn't usually get in the way of government projects -- it can always just be ordered to be moved.
Treating patent rights as being equivalent to land might set a nasty precedent, though. So the Government -- who, after all, are the ultimate authority to which the patent office answer -- could just decide to annul the patent. Problem solved, everybody happy.
Remember, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few; but the needs of the few outweigh the whims and caprices of the many.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Above post applies to Australia only.
the submitter of that story was probably not worried in earnest
The concept of "property" really doesn't work very well when applied to ideas, does it? One can't very well set a price on something that hasn't even been placed into the market yet. An idea may sound good, but maybe it won't work, or people won't buy it, or it can't be brought to market profitably. There are hundreds of reasons why an idea may not make it.
Since the market is the final arbitrator of value in our quasi-capitalist economy, no government could ever compute a Fair Value price for an untested idea. The problem is unsolvable.
Compare this to a house or any tangible item that can be placed in the market. It's clear that the comparison between a product and an idea is apples-to-oranges.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
So, some people want to believe in the God of the Bible (the classic definition of "fundamentalist Christian".) And this is a cause of concern to you because ... ?
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
In Aus the govt has the right to use IP for a year and then decide how much is fair to pay for it.
Eminent domain for patents is pointless tho, as they arent property but rather limited temporary monopoly rights.
Like with all monopolies costs will rise to what the market can bear, and so it's not really useful to blame the pharmaceuticals; they're operating within the economic logic of the current patent legislation.
From a free market point of view, the problem with all current intellectual monopoly legislation is that the monopoly power is extended throughout an entire enterprise. With such legislation, R&D, which is what should be financed by patents, becomes not an end to itself, but a means through which the rest of the organisation can avoid competition. R&D becomes just a small subservient part to the needs of the massive cost behemoth of a corporation without outside market pressure.
For intellectual monopoly grants to be useful they have to be limited to finance R&D, and R&D _only_.
This guy is already all over this question: http://williampatry.blogspot.com/ Basically the short answer is that copyright suits against the government don't seem to be worth the trouble. Also can anyone tell if the picture is a joke? Or is he serious?
Since the OSS community works rather hard to avoid patent trouble I fail to see how using OSS puts any user/incorporator more at risk than using proprietary software. Also, if any entity could afford the legal fights that *might* arise it is the government. If it surfaces in their face maybe it would even motivate them to clean up the patent mess that they created in the first place.
The issue of patent use by government agencies in the U.S. has been settled by court cases, and is basically dependent on whether it's a state government or the Federal government. For states, a party can get an injunction to stop them from using a patent, but they can't get monetary damages; in the case of the Federal government, they can get monetary damages but they cannot get an injunction to stop continued use. Now, some of this may have changed but this was the status the last time I heard about the issue.
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
Sure. But seriously; Fuck Australia.
You should be careful, they have brain-eating drop-bears.
And Steve Irwin.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
if "national security and fear of a possible state of emergency" are powerful enough tools to allow the govt to strip points out of the Bill of Rights, they should also be enough justification to take out any patents that multinationals attempt to use when obstructing the national interest.
;|
Unless politicians don't vote according to their conscience when it comes to multinationals..... it doesn't sound likely a politician would do that though...