Stop the Insanity
According to US patent 7028023 it looks like everyone using QLinkedList are violating a patent. Let's have some of those in Europe as well *irony*. I'm making a donation to FSFE.
posted by Johan Thelin @ 14:23
11 comments
11 Comments:
Then the Linked List next the String !
patent was filled in april 2006, now someone obviously haven't done his job correctly, (did you said previous art?).
Prior art yes... I'm not sure what scares me the most - that some little prick decides to apply for an obviously invalid patent, or that the patent authority let it pass.
Hey, At least they added a SECOND pointer to the classic linked list in a attempt to create something unique :)
No. 10260471 filed on 2002-09-26
While it might seem silly to patent something so obvious, I don't think this patent really endangers QLinkedList and here's why. They clearly state that linked lists are a prior art and they extend the prior art by allowing linked lists to have different sequences (n.b. views) for traversal, that is, different secondary orders.
Now, I am sure *that* has some prior art, but QLinkedList doesn't appear to be it.
Err, any sorted doubly linked list has this property. And don't some of the convex hull algorithms in Aho and Ulman have this as the obvious implementation.
If this is a US patent only, then we Europeans have nothing to fear ;) Based on the fact that Trolltech is registered in Norway, they are safe as well... Right?
I'm not a lawyer, but I think that you cannot distribute a product in the US if you infringe a patent...
But what if you buy the product from a company registered in Norway?
This is all hypothetical, the patent is plain silly...
I'm not sure how it works, but that puts you in a situation where you have imported a patented technology so I guess that you can run into issues anyway...
I'm not sure if growlaw has something on this - but I would guess that it is the place to look.
As far as I understand in the US owning patents has little effect until you successfully defend it in court. All software infringes on a number of patents. Some of these are invalid and will not stand in court. So for practical reasons they can be ignored. Other patents, however, have stood or can (possibly) stand in court. That is why companies register lots of patents - they can threaten other companies with potentially sueing themselves. Kind of like nuclear weapons. If all have many, noone will attack.
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