*BSD News Article 5644


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From: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu (Charles Hedrick)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Subject: Re: Catch What They're Saying About Us...
Message-ID: <Sep.26.02.07.48.1992.16929@athos.rutgers.edu>
Date: 26 Sep 92 06:07:50 GMT
References: <19oe23INNqh0@agate.berkeley.edu> <VIXIE.92Sep23102423@cognition.pa.dec.com> <19ta0nINNj2q@agate.berkeley.edu> <1992Sep25.054120.3966@spcvxb.spc.edu>
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 16

terry@spcvxb.spc.edu (Terry Kennedy, Operations Mgr.) writes:

>  You repeatedly attempt to disassociate yourselves from this suit. I wonder
>why? Surely you realize that if a verdict is reached that Net-2 contains USL
>proprietary material, you will have to cease distributing 386BSD?

While this is certainly a logical view, it may not be true.  I asked
one of our faculty, who is a lawyer with some knowledge of
intellectual property issues, to look at the complaint and a copy of
our ATT license.  He thinks the suit is going to turn on how the
courts interpret the details of the relationship between ATT and
Berkeley.  It is not impossible that BSDI could end up being
prohibited from using BSD, but that non-commercial BSD-based software
would be unaffected.  I thought the theory that would lead to this was
pretty bizarre.  But so far the evidence suggests that when lawyers
get involved in software, anything is possible (except bug-free code).