[Sussex] Some Good Will Come From Software Patents

[Geoffrey Teale]

On Mon, 2004-12-20 at 17:05 +0000, Steve Dobson wrote:
> How?

Because a court will rule on anything that comes to trial.  Jurisdiction
is debatable but a court will still rule and it's ruling will be binding
in the USA at least  - if you trade in the USA or a nation that
recognises its courts decision then you have to deal with it in that
court or face loosing major markets.

The case I mentioned (Yukos vs. The Russian Government) was tried in a
US court.  The russian government has no reason to agree with this
decision, but international diplomacy now becomes an issue:

http://www.usatoday.com/money/world/2004-12-16-yukos-thur-nite_x.htm?POE=MONISVA

Most companies however cannot decide to ignore a foreign court in this
manner if they which to trade in that country.

One other case springs to mind, Dymitri Skylarov.. 'nuff said..

-- 
Geoffrey Teale <tealeg at member.fsf.org>
Free Software Foundation