Re: Apple patent on Dock affecting dock packages ?
On Thu, Oct 09, 2008 at 07:40:15PM +0200, Julien Lavergne wrote:
> Hi,
>
> There is now a patent for Apple of the concept of "Dock". Is there a
> risk for all "dock" packages in Debian, such as avant-window-navigator ?
FWIW, the patent is more about zooming docks like the OSX one than plain
docks. I don't know how the different claims are to be understood
individually, but some are detailing the zoom factors with algebraic
formulas.
IANAL, but patents are not supposed to "protect" ideas, but
implementations. It is at least true in the hardware industry. It often
happens that companies circumvent competitor patents by implementing the
same idea in another way, sometimes even filing a patent for the new
implementation.
Maybe different implementations of the same idea would be fine.
Mike
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