4 ms·

I could be wrong and IANAL, but I doubt you'll be able to get lawyers for Facebook to spend time on request to figure out which patents might cover a particular

by comex 11y ago

I could be wrong and IANAL, but I doubt you'll be able to get lawyers for Facebook to spend time on request to figure out which patents might cover a particular piece of code - especially since I think telling you there aren't any might let you claim estoppel in the (extremely unlikely) case they actually wanted to sue you. But you can get a list of Facebook's patents here: http://stks.freshpatents.com/Facebook-Inc-nm1.php http://stks.freshpatents.com/Facebook-Inc-nm1.php edit: Of course, just because they're including patent boilerplate doesn't mean anyone actually did this research in the first place or believes that a particular patent covers it; I would be surprised if someone had, as opposed it just being standard boilerplate (although it doesn't seem to be on all their projects). There's little reason to worry more about patents on this project than on any other open source project distributed under a BSD license, without an "additional" grant of patent rights. Not none, but little.

kuschku 11y ago
Well, I distrust this kind of software patents in general, and (this violates Facebook’s patent grant) think most of them are invalid, including many which Facebook owns. So, as I directly and openly violate their grant, I’d prefer to make sure that their patents either (a) don’t apply in Germany, or (b) are invalid, or (c) they don’t actually have patented a specific kind of idea.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- kelrien 11y ago
  Sadly it is next to impossible to get a patent for software in germany. It has to interface with some kind of hardware (like an engine control software in a car or plane). A bot or something similar that only runs on a computer can't be patented in germany. I am german myself and work on a research project and we tested some software on our participants and they loved it. So we thought about protecting our idea / software. For that reason we attended a talk held by multiple patent lawyers specialised in germany law and all of them said the same: "It can't be done without a hardware interface".

by comex 11y ago

kuschku 11y ago

Well, I distrust this kind of software patents in general, and (this violates Facebook’s patent grant) think most of them are invalid, including many which Facebook owns. So, as I directly and openly violate their grant, I’d prefer to make sure that their patents either (a) don’t apply in Germany, or (b) are invalid, or (c) they don’t actually have patented a specific kind of idea.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
kelrien 11y ago
Sadly it is next to impossible to get a patent for software in germany. It has to interface with some kind of hardware (like an engine control software in a car or plane). A bot or something similar that only runs on a computer can't be patented in germany. I am german myself and work on a research project and we tested some software on our participants and they loved it. So we thought about protecting our idea / software. For that reason we attended a talk held by multiple patent lawyers specialised in germany law and all of them said the same: "It can't be done without a hardware interface".