Re: [DotGNU]Re: the .NET API patent issue

[j_post]

On Friday 10 October 2003 06:41 pm, Norbert Bollow wrote:
>... it'll probably just have
> to be distributed only from ftp servers outside the US, and be
> marked "not for use in the US" or something.
>
"Not for use in the US" is a null phrase to me. Software engineering is 
applied mathematics (yeah, I know a lot of people don't believe this; at one 
time a lot of people didn't believe that the Earth orbits the Sun). 
Mathematics is not patentable (despite what the USPTO seems to think), hence 
software algorithms are not patentable.

I've put myself out on a limb (from a legal point of view) on this before, 
and I will continue to do so. I do not acknowledge the validity of *any* 
software patent.

Therefore I hope that marking code "not for use in the US" will not prevent 
those of us who live in the US from physically downloading said code.

Jeff