Re: patents on Frets on Fire, Pydance, StepMania and such games

[Karl Goetz <kamping_kaiser@internode.on.net>]

On Fri, 2008-01-18 at 12:06 +0000, John Halton wrote:
> On Jan 18, 2008 10:22 AM, Miriam Ruiz <little.miry@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Tom "spot" Callaway, from Red Hat, announced [1] that Fedora won't be
> > including any game of the kind of Frets on Fire, Stepmania, pydance,
> > digiband, or anything of the kind of DDR or Guitar Hero, due to patent
> > concerns [2].
> >
> 
> I haven't been able to find out whether there are any equivalent
> patents outside the US, so it may be this is a US-only (or perhaps
> Japan also) patent. What is Debian's policy as regards software that
> is encumbered by patents in one jurisdiction but not others?

I expect many places with Free Trade Agreements with the USA will
'inherit' the patent from the US.
Australia and New Zealand fall in this catagory i think.
kk

> 
> John
> 
> (TINLA)
> 
> 
-- 
Karl Goetz <kamping_kaiser@internode.on.net>
Debian / Ubuntu / gNewSense