Despite SCO failing to make much progress in its lawsuits against IBM and others for allegedly infringing its Unix software copyrights, uncertainty over patents remains, and is causing the City of Munich to ask German politicians to clarify the legal issues

http://www.computing.co.uk/itweek/an...

As SchieBl explains, Munich needed a subset of what commercial distributions offer. Software patents were a great concern if the entire LiMux distribution would be subsequently freely distributed if others wanted to use it. This required examining all of the components for licensing and distribution rights. Clearing the software patent hurdle caused the project to grind to a halt during that phase, and delayed the process considerably. Although software patent issues still arise from the dead in the European Union political process, Munich feels it has cleared them sufficiently to deploy LiMux desktop systems.

The trial was tested and completed, and a first rollout occurred on Sept. 19, 2006, about three years after the decision to make the move towards Linux. The migration is scheduled to take place, subject to development of user applications and other factors, by approximately 2009. More than 170 applications will be replaced with open source

http://www.computerworld.com.au/arti...

While the U.S. courts recently reaffirmed Microsoft's FAT (File Allocation Table) patents, the German Patent Federal Court has just dismissed the patent for use in Germany.

Spread the word: digg this story

According to a report in the German news publication Heise Online, the court has denied the protection that the European Patent Office granted to Microsoft under EP 0618540 for a "common namespace for long and short filenames." This was based on Microsoft's US Patent No. 5,758,352. The German Patent Court stated that the patent claims Microsoft made are "not based on inventive activity."

FAT is a file system that Windows and other operating systems use to track the clusters of data that make up files on mass storage devices, such as hard drives or USB memory sticks. In Linux circles, it's best known for its use in the Samba server application. Samba enables Windows PCs to read and write files on Linux servers, and allows Linux desktops to access Windows servers.

Some supporters of Linux and free software have long feared that Microsoft could use its FAT patents to attack Linux vendors and users. While Microsoft has never done so, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has often made claims that Linux "uses [Microsoft's] intellectual property."

Microsoft has been willing to license FAT to European vendors for prices ranging from US $0.25 per unit to a one-time payment in full of US $250,000 per company. No Linux distributor, however, has ever admitted to paying such a fee. In Germany, at least, no vendor ever will.

http://www.computing.co.uk/itweek/an...

I'd have no problem seeking enforcement in Munich, Germany.

Be well