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Path: sserve!manuel!munnari.oz.au!mips!mips!atha!canada!lyndon From: lyndon@ampr.ab.ca (Lyndon Nerenberg) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Subject: Re: AT&T sues BSDI Message-ID: <102@ampr.ab.ca> Date: 25 Jul 92 20:33:27 GMT References: <1992Jul22.221515.23550@tfs.com> <1992Jul25.061414.3401@spcvxb.spc.edu> Organization: Boycott AT&T! Lines: 25 terry@spcvxb.spc.edu (Terry Kennedy, Operations Mgr.) writes: > If AT&T/USL wins this case, this means that any vendor can claim that they > have rights of "intellectual ancestry" or some such balderdash over any pack- > age found on the net. What would you think if they claimed that AT&T/USL had > "rights" to GCC because the specification of C was originally developed by > them? It is exactly this scenario that is covered by copyright law. And this is the part that makes the least sense to anyone. If their assertion is that BSD/386 is a derivative work based on System V, why are they not challenging this as a copyright violation? As for the C vs. gcc argument, the feeling is that you cannot protect a programming language per se, although you can prevent someone from calling it 'C' if you properly protect the name 'C' as used in conjunction with that programming language. Witness what DOD has done to protect the name Ada. This is also similar to protection of font names. You can protect the name, but you can't protect the font itself. So given the existance of legal remedy to deal with both these examples, why is USL invoking smoke and mirrors instead of pursuing damages under copyright or patent law? I think the answer is obvious. --lyndon