[pypy-dev] Intellectual property

[David Mertz, Ph.D.]

|> What could the PSF do if Microsoft and Sun each claim that the
|>project makes illegal use of some 1000 patents?
|> the States seem to take the lead in ridicoulous Patent and Copyright
|>law with Europe following closely.

|Good point. America's IP rights suck. (Who saind DMCA..) And problems
|shouldn't be underestimated.. I don't know if the Europen IP rights will
|get that bad. Isn't there any organization outside of the USA who can get
|the IP ?

I doubt it would make any difference where the rights-holding
organization is.  I agree strongly that USAian IP laws are ghastly
awful, and gratuitous IP lawsuits rampants.  And Europe isn't as good as
it should be either.

But if big corporations decide they want to kill MiniPy with patents,
they'll fish for a jurisdiction they like.  Even if a Cuban organization
officially holds the code[*], the project will be distributed to USAian
and European users, mirrored or hosted on servers in those places,
perhaps sold with books and CDs, and so on.  Those connections are
plenty for the bad guys to gain jurisdiction.  Or at least to argue it
to death.

Yours, David...

[*] Cuba, whatever negative press it gets in the USA, has an enormously
sensible IP legal framework.  No gene patents, disallowing drug patents
to hinder treatment, broad fair use of copyright, etc.  Probably better
than just about any other country, if you like freedom.

--
Keeping medicines from the bloodstreams of the sick; food from the bellies
of the hungry; books from the hands of the uneducated; technology from the
underdeveloped; and putting advocates of freedom in prisons.  Intellectual
property is to the 21st century what the slave trade was to the 16th.