Kodak v. Sun

[Belisarius]

So, what do people think about this ruling? Being that I'm a bit of a Sun fanboy, and a big Java fanboy, you can just guess my reaction to it. But it seriously affect you Microsoft programmers too, as the patent not only covers Java, but .Net as well.

Slasdot link
Groklaw link

[sde]

oh god, isn't that like saying Software Company #2 can not publish their software which reads and writes it's information to a database because Software Company #1 has already patented that idea?

[redhead]

The patent at hand here, is not the fact that some code part uses another program/engine to execute it's code, any open/closed source program uses some form of that.

The patent describes the execution at runtime, how the exchange of information memorywise is done between the engine and the code "borrowing" the engines hardware access.
There are different ways of achieving this, some are more optimised than others.

But true, this does qualify as one incident which got out of hand, in this new world with all the law and order we claim is so good for us.