S3 texture compression patent

[Gerhard W. Gruber]

On Mon, 20 Oct 2003 00:20:29 +0200, "Ivan Leo Murray-Smith" <puoti at inwind.it>
wrote:

>No, if you're in the US and publish something in the EU, you aren't violating
>any US law, as you aren't publising anything in the US. If this isn't the case,

I'm not hundred percent sure. If you are in the US you have to download and
work on the code in the US and this would mean that you actually broke the law
in the US. I don't know what the laws exactly say, but I don't think that it
would matter just because you are publishing the material not in the US, then
again it could. i.E. for copy protection software you would brake the law just
by analyzing this and writing software that could circumvent it. Hosting it in
a different country would probably not matter. I don't know if the law on
patents is as strict as for copy protection, but I would guess so. 

>the US constitution must have a few bugs in it. This would also mean moving the
>mailing list archives and the CVS to the EU, but I don't think this will happen,
>unless you show that there is a patent violation and that wine will never work
>without violating that patent.

Emulating a certain feature could require that. But then again it might give
incentive to users if they knew that it works i.e. in the EU but not in the uS
just because of stupid laws. Then agina it depends on how much influence the
wine community has. :)

-- 
Gerhard Gruber

Für jedes menschliche Problem gibt es immer eine einfache Lösung:
Klar, einleuchtend und falsch. (Henry Louis Mencken)