At the Drupal project, we actively work to inform folks of license
infringement, and monitor released derivative works -- mostly modules
-- to insure that they are including the GPL v2 license.

We also work with the Software Freedom Law Center to address issues
that are beyond our scope.

Drupal is, to the degree possible, trademarked, but neither the Drupal
Association, nor Dries Buytaert, Drupal's creator hold any patents on
its functionality.

Thanks,

Cary

On Mon, Dec 5, 2011 at 9:53 AM, Erik Hetzner <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> At Mon, 5 Dec 2011 08:17:26 -0500,
> Emily Lynema wrote:
>>
>> A colleague approached me this morning with an interesting question that I
>> realized I didn't know how to answer. How are open source projects in the
>> library community dancing around technologies that may have been patented
>> by vendors? We were particularly wondering about this in light of open
>> source ILS projects, like Kuali OLE, Koha, and Evergreen. I know OLE is
>> still in the early stages, but did the folks who created Koha and Evergreen
>> ever run into any problems in this area? Have library vendors historically
>> pursued patents for their systems and solutions?
>
> I don’t think libraries have a particularly unique perspective on
> this: most free/open source software projects have the same issues
> with patents.
>
> The Software Freedom Law Center has some basic information about these
> issues. As I recall, the “Legal basics for developers” edition of
> their podcasts is useful [1], but other editions may be helpful as
> well.
>
> Basically, the standard advice for patents is what Mike Taylor gave:
> ignore them. Pay attention to copyright and trademark issues (as the
> Koha problem shows), but patents really don’t need to be on your
> radar.
>
> best, Erik
>
> 1. http://www.softwarefreedom.org/podcast/2011/aug/16/Episode-0x16-Legal-Basics-for-Developers/
>
> Sent from my free software system <http://fsf.org/>.
>



-- 
Cary Gordon
The Cherry Hill Company
http://chillco.com