From owner-freebsd-chat Fri Mar 24 17:54:20 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from lariat.lariat.org (lariat.lariat.org [206.100.185.2]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id CA1F837B51E for ; Fri, 24 Mar 2000 17:54:14 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from brett@lariat.org) Received: from mustang (IDENT:ppp0.lariat.org@lariat.lariat.org [206.100.185.2]) by lariat.lariat.org (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id SAA07682; Fri, 24 Mar 2000 18:53:36 -0700 (MST) Message-Id: <4.2.2.20000324174630.041cb800@localhost> X-Sender: brett@localhost X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.2.2 Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2000 17:50:50 -0700 To: Terry Lambert , rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in (Rahul Siddharthan) From: Brett Glass Subject: Re: On "intelligent people" and "dangers to BSD" Cc: tlambert@primenet.com (Terry Lambert), adsharma@sharmas.dhs.org (Arun Sharma), freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: <200003232352.QAA03123@usr08.primenet.com> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org At 04:52 PM 3/23/2000 , Terry Lambert wrote: >Patents filed after the cut-off date are 20 years from date of >filing, regardless of date of issue. > >The reason this is so is that the US has a Constitutional >premise that something which is not illegal can not be made >illegal. This is called "ipos facto"; That's "ex post facto." And it refers to making something illegal and then penalizing people who did it before the law was passed. You CAN penalize people who do it afterward. >a loose translation >is "a law after the fact". This is why you can own short >barrelled shotguns in the US, so long as they were made >before the law making them "illegal" went into effect. See above. Also, a patent makes nothing illegal; it grants an exclusive right. The most recent copyright extension law removed some material from the public domain. That would have been illegal, too, if this principle had applied. Alas, it wasn't. --Brett "Rules? This is the Internet." -- Dan Gillmor To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message