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<div><span class="gmail_quote">On 07/02/2008, <b class="gmail_sendername">Brian Wood</b> <<a href="mailto:beww@beww.org">beww@beww.org</a>> wrote:</span>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">Mike Perkins wrote:<br>> Jon wrote:<br>>> As I understand it, in order to be infringing on a patent, you have<br>
>> to have a retail product that you are making profits off of. I<br>>> believe that personal, not for profit, use is allowed under US patent<br>>> law (but I'm not a lawyer, so don't take my word)<br>
>><br>> I don't think that would fly. If I made myself a box, which "more or less"<br>> duplicated the functionality of a TiVo, then they could argue that I have in<br>> fact made a "profit" in that they are out the cost of the box I didn't buy from<br>
> them. Thin, maybe, but the way lawyers split hairs these days...<br><br>I realize logic doesn't enter into it, but:<br><br>If I plan to make a product for sale, I can be expected to make a<br>diligent search to see if I might be infringing a patent.<br>
<br>If I build something for myself in my basement shop, or create a science<br>fair project, I don't see where I can be expected to incur the expense<br>of a patent search.<br><br>But as I said, logic probably has nothing to do with it.<br>
<br>bewww<br>_______________________________________________<br>mythtv-users mailing list<br><a href="mailto:mythtv-users@mythtv.org">mythtv-users@mythtv.org</a><br><a href="http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users">http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users</a><br>
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<div>As far as myth is concerned though, I think at the end of the day though it comes to money</div>
<div>there's no point in going after individual users you'd get no return.</div>
<div>I suppose they might go after the ISP hosting the website...</div>
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<div>More likely they'd go after the capture card manufacturers who after all bundle PVR software with their cards and can be expected to have some money. </div>
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<div>We could hope that they try it on with Microsoft... somehow I think I know who'd win that one!</div>
<div>(Who'd have thought it Microsoft could be good for an Opensource project! ;-) )</div>
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<div>What puzzles me though is, if there's all this prior art, how come Tivo still won the case against Dish?</div>
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<div>Cheers</div>
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<div>Steve<br> </div>