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software patents
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From: |
rjack |
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Subject: |
software patents |
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Date: |
Wed, 15 Nov 2006 09:50:31 -0500 |
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User-agent: |
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.2) Gecko/20040804 Netscape/7.2 (ax) |
Can someone explain how a copyrighted computer program can infringe a
software patent ?
17 USC 102(b) states:
“In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship
extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation,
concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is
described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work.”
So any source code that implements the method or procedure of a software
patent cannot be copyrighted. Therefore no copyright license can ever
effect the code implementing a software patent.
So why does the proposed FSF GPL3 contain terms referring to software
patents ?
The GPL3 rev 2 states:
http://gplv3.fsf.org/gpl-draft-2006-07-27.txt
“In this License, each licensee is addressed as "you," while "the
Program" refers to any work of authorship licensed under this License. .
. To "propagate" a work means doing anything with it that requires
permission under applicable copyright law, except executing it on a
computer, or making modifications that you do not share.”
The “Program” obviously refers to a copyrighted work. What is the
relevance to software patents ?