[News.eclipse.foundation] Re: [LEGAL] - Scared About Patents!

[ilias <ilias@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 13 Oct 2004 17:36:47 -0400, Mike Milinkovich <mike.milinkovich@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Ilias,
>
> I doubt very much that the Eclipse Foundation will be providing this
> information. We cannot provide legal advice to anyone....which is basically
> what you are asking for below.

I am not asking for legal advice.

I am asking for a _general_ legal guidance [which can have a disclaimer, that it is not a legal advice].

You provide already such legal guidance e.g. with the CPL/EPL documents.

> As one concrete example, deciding whether something is prior art is
> extremely complicated, and requires the judgement of professional attorneys.

There are general rules, which need only some common sense to evaluate.

Professional patent attorneys can evaluate and write down some of those most general rules (context: open source project contribution).

-

I've described a very basic issue within open source, which should interest some of the contributors to open source projects.

Eclipse Foundation should forward those essential questions to its patent attorney.

He could write an compact clarifying article [with a standard disclaimer].

This is similar to elaborating licensing issues to contributors/customers/members etc.!

Eclipse foundation contributors could say then: "See, _my_ Foundation cares!"

A gentle Foundation should not expect that every single contributor makes his own research on patent issues.

.

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