From: Philippe Verdy (verdy_p@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Tue Feb 20 2007 - 06:39:09 CST
De la part de Doug Ewell:
> You'd probably want to check to make sure that the resulting spec didn't
> infringe on the individual claims made in the BOCU patent.
Are you sure that this (individual claims) is required? I've seen comments
about US patents where infringement is demonstrated only when *all* claims
are infringed. If you drop only only claim (for example some details about
the implementation technics), and replace it by something else not covered
in that patent, then it is not the same product, and it is not patented.
Then the question is whever these considerations do apply internationally
(are there countries where the US patent is honoured, but where patent
claims can be enforced individually?)
Regarding the challenge of licence of ICU in courts, it would be very
difficult to counter, because this would also challenge the licences of
almost all open softwares licenced under the X licence (and the MIT would
not like to have this famous licence broken).
The good question is then: does the IBM-signed ICU licence cover the
included IBM's IPR regarding BOCU-* patents?
* if yes, then BOCU-* patents are validly licenced for free in ICU.
* if no, then how can BOCU-* algorithms be present in ICU sources (i.e. is
it compatible with ICU licence)? So IBM would have violated itself the ICU
licence by including BOCU-* in ICU sources (yes but, he is the IPR owner, so
IBM can do whatever it wants, not like other ICU contributors)... But I have
not seen any explicit licence exclusion in ICU sources files, so all files
are covered globally by the same licence (and the ICU licence provides no
way that allows excluding some files from its project).
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