NewsForge: A Fresh--And Optimistic--Take on Patents and Open Source

"Dan Ravicher, President, Executive Director, and Founder of the Public Patent Foundation, believes there are plenty of ways open source developers, advocates, and users can fight against innovation-hindering software patents...

"First, Ravicher says, individual open source software users don't need to worry. The most a company like Microsoft could get out of them would be the value of products they didn't buy because they were, instead, using products that infringed Microsoft patents, and it simply wouldn't be worth Microsoft's time and effort to track all the users down and sue us..."

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• NewsForge: Patents in an Open Source World(Jul 27, 2004)