No he’s not talking about the interminable struggle between Bill and the Commission; where he hopes Bill will get an atomic wedgie from the Masters of Bureaucracy.
No, what Geeklawyer is banging on about is the AT&T case currently before the US Supreme Court. This related to a US patented program that was used in Windows. AT&T want damages for patent infringement not just for the infringement in the copies supplied in the US but also for those copies supplied outside the US where there is no patent.
The relevant statute, 35 U.S.C. 271(f), says;
(1) Whoever without authority supplies or causes to be supplied in or from the United States all or a substantial portion of the components of a patented invention, where such components are uncombined in whole or in part, in such manner as to actively induce the combination of such components outside of the United States in a manner that would infringe the patent if such combination occurred within the United States, shall be liable as an infringer.
Microsoft ship a gold master disk abroad where local copies are generated. AT&Ts argument is that even the local copies are infringing as being ‘effectively’ shipped indirectly from the US and the statute intended that. Microsoft responds “isn’t, isn’t, isn’t, a million times”, although the actual oral argument was a little more expansive.
Geeklawyer agrees with Microsoft (Oh God that was horrid and demeaning) and says that a strict interpretation is the right one; AT&T are pushing the text of the statute too far. The making of copies locally is not an act of supplying from the US.
Frankly, its bad enough to have Americans saddled with all that crap, though it’s their own damned fault, but why should us Europeans have to pay for this nonsense.
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