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Path: sserve!manuel!munnari.oz.au!uunet!cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!igor.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!hedrick From: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu (Charles Hedrick) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Subject: Re: Catch What They're Saying About Us... Message-ID: <Sep.26.02.07.48.1992.16929@athos.rutgers.edu> Date: 26 Sep 92 06:07:50 GMT References: <19oe23INNqh0@agate.berkeley.edu> <VIXIE.92Sep23102423@cognition.pa.dec.com> <19ta0nINNj2q@agate.berkeley.edu> <1992Sep25.054120.3966@spcvxb.spc.edu> Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Lines: 16 terry@spcvxb.spc.edu (Terry Kennedy, Operations Mgr.) writes: > You repeatedly attempt to disassociate yourselves from this suit. I wonder >why? Surely you realize that if a verdict is reached that Net-2 contains USL >proprietary material, you will have to cease distributing 386BSD? While this is certainly a logical view, it may not be true. I asked one of our faculty, who is a lawyer with some knowledge of intellectual property issues, to look at the complaint and a copy of our ATT license. He thinks the suit is going to turn on how the courts interpret the details of the relationship between ATT and Berkeley. It is not impossible that BSDI could end up being prohibited from using BSD, but that non-commercial BSD-based software would be unaffected. I thought the theory that would lead to this was pretty bizarre. But so far the evidence suggests that when lawyers get involved in software, anything is possible (except bug-free code).