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Re: The GPL and Patents: ROFL


From: Hyman Rosen
Subject: Re: The GPL and Patents: ROFL
Date: Wed, 08 Dec 2010 16:00:05 -0000
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On 8/19/2010 11:57 AM, Alexander Terekhov wrote:
Hyman Rosen wrote:
On 8/19/2010 11:39 AM, RJack wrote:
No court case is required:
Is that like "show me the settlement agreements"?
Not at all stupid Hyman.
If you claim the existence of GPL "settlements" then show me the
settlement agreements.
Rjack didn't claim that there are court cases objecting your silly idea,
he said that if you can't understand the plain teaching of the statute
as written then all the court cases in the world won't help.
Got it now?

When the SFLC ends its cases, the defendants are seen to comply
with the GPL. This can be verified by going to their websites
and actually downloading the compliant code. When an anti-GPL
crank claims that a statute says the opposite of what it actually
does, and therefore "reasons" to a ridiculous conclusion, it is
fair to ask for proof that a court has agreed with that. Naturally
there is no such proof, because falsehoods can't be proven, and so
much handwaving and insults ensue to obfuscate that.

Again, for clarity, 17 USC 102(b) says:
<http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/102.html>
    In no case does copyright protection for an original work of
    authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system,
    method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery,
    regardless of the form in which it is described, explained,
    illustrated, or embodied in such work.

Notice that it says in no case does copyright protection for a
work extend to an idea. That is, there is copyright protection
for the work. This protection does not extend to the idea. The
English could not be any more plain. Read the decision in Apple
v. Franklin,
<http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=10063204125696546680>,
for an education on this by a court, where Franklin had as many
or more crankish arguments as to copyrightability as any of the
resident cranks here, and were sharply corrected.


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