Mono apps in extras

[Mitch Skinner]

On Tue, 2006-01-24 at 12:03 +0100, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> According to RH until recently, mono/C#/.net are subject to potential
> patent claims.

I don't have any inside information from RH or FF, but I have noticed
that the main patent application that's been discussed (the API patent
application) recently became abandoned.  Microsoft received a non-final
rejection last October 21st, and they had three months to fix the
application, but they didn't do anything.

Now that they've missed the deadline, they can't try a whole new
application, because (under US law) you have to file a patent
application within a year of publishing the details of the invention,
and it's been more than a year.

I'm not a lawyer, and this isn't legal advice, but I did spend some time
reading the US patent office's patent examiner manual.  As far as I can
tell, the only way they can revive that patent application is if they
can show that there was an unavoidable or unintentional delay for the
whole three months.  I think that's pretty unlikely, so I personally
feel a lot more comfortable about using/contributing to mono and mono
apps.

There may be other patents or other patent applications, but I haven't
seen anyone directly identify any.  The one I'm talking about is here:
http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1='20030028685'.PGNR.&OS=DN/20030028685&RS=DN/20030028685

Mitch