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On 2011-09-10, Dennis E. Hamilton wrote:
planas [mailto:jslozier@gmail.com]  wrote:
On Fri, 2011-09-09 at 21:51 +0100, Dave Howorth wrote: 
On Fri, 2011-09-09 at 09:27 -0700, NoOp wrote:
Really? I see nothing hidden here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc313071%28v=office.12%29.aspx

<http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/4/8/24862317-78F0-4C4B-B355-C7B2C1D997DB/%5BMS-OFFCRYPTO%5D.pdf>

I think the interesting bit is the following:

"Microsoft has patents that may cover your implementations of the
technologies described in the Open Specifications. Neither this notice
nor Microsoft's delivery of the documentation grants any licenses under
those or any other Microsoft patents. However, a given Open
Specification may be covered ..."

The emphasis, I feel, is on the word "may".
[...]
I noticed that Haworth left of the part after the "may be covered
... "?

Is it not good to first check to see if the specification is indeed
covered or not?

From what I recall from some USENET talks about this, it's actually
better *not* to check, as if you knowingly violate a patent, fines and
the rest are heavier than if you didn't know there was a patent.

So until the US Congress decides to abandon the power to legislate
patents and copyrights stipulated in the US Constitution, this is
pretty much as good as it gets short of MSFT not having obtained any
patents in the first place (whether or not any apply to items under
the Open Specification Promise).

We don't need the US Congress (and some other legislative branches over
the world) to stop legislating patents, we just need them to stop
screwing the definition of patent. Algorithm patenteability is a
Pandora's box that should have never been opened.

(Copyright has nothing to do with this, unless you plan to copy
Microsoft's code in some way.)

IANAL

-- 
Nuno J. Silva (aka njsg)
gopher://sdf-eu.org/1/users/njsg

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