To: gopher@complete.org
Subject: [gopher] Re: Heads up
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From: John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org>
Date: 10 Jan 2002 10:24:21 -0500
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MJ Ray <markj@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk> writes:

> There is the "not limited to patent issues" part in there.  If UMN can in
> any way legally claim to own the *idea* of gopher as was feared in the past,
> then surely the problem still survives?  If their licence fee idea was based

Well, I think that by this point we are talking about a problem that
could be argued with any GPL'd software, not just gopher.

In the US, we have three different ways to "own the idea":

1. Copyright
2. Patent
3. Trademark

Copyright applies to the actual software -- the sources and binaries.
It is the license from the copyright holder that allows us to
distribute the software and it is this license that UMN changed to GPL
for us.

Patent applies to "processes" -- variously, it can sometimes be
applied to computer algorithms.  AFAIK, UMN holds no such patents and
even if they do, they have never tried to enforce them.  This issue
would not be unique to the UMN source tree, BTW.  There have been
plenty of non-UMN gopher clients and servers and they operated more or
less with UMN's blessing (as do we) -- several are still distributed
on boombox.  Paul could maybe confirm what I'm saying here, but I
believe it to be correct.

Trademark applies to a name.  A USPTO search shows no relevant
trademark has been issued.

> on charging for the software, there is probably no problem now, but I don't
> know the history well enough (as I wasn't on-net at the time concerned).  I
> would be surprised if it was software-based, as that would have dropped dead
> with the RFCs for the protocol, wouldn't it?

Most likely, yes... many standards processes require loosening hold on
patents or other intellectual property.

-- John