Patent on AspectJ

[Gavin Bong]

Since Xerox Parc owns the AspectJ patent, it seems like there will be some licensing issues. Rikard (in April) says that the patent is only for the US. The brouhaha over this started in Q2. How will this affect commercial usage of AspectJ (or AOP for that matter) ?
Thanks
Gavin

[Pradeep bhatt]

I want to know whether progarmmers in other countries can use it? :roll:

[Lasse Koskela]

Sounds like the PARC Place folks have learned their lesson from getting shafted with SmallTalk... Seriously, though, I would also like to get a brief explanation of how this licensing issue affects developers who use the Aspect (both non-US and US citizens)?

[John Zoetebier]

As far as I understand the law regarding patents, is a patent only applicable in the country where the patent is lodged.
In this case that is the USA.
If the patent is only lodged in the USA it is effective only in the USA.
An other thing to note that as far as I know it is not possible to petent generic ideas. Otherwise it would be possible to patent something like space travel, day dreaming, etc. If the concept of AOP was already in the public domain before the patent was lodged it is not valid.
An other distinction between AOP and AspectJ: the latter being an implementation of AOP. However I can see some diefferences between the terminology used in the patent and the terminology of AspectJ. And of course, AspectJ is evolving, which makes it even harder for the patent owners to make a claim with regards to AspectJ.

[Gavin Bong]

John

If the concept of AOP was already in the public domain before the patent was lodged it is not valid.

Xerox already has the patent! That's a done deal. I hope Ramnivas can shed some light on this.

[Lasse Koskela]

Xerox already has the patent! That's a done deal.

I think I've read somewhere that patents can be revoked when in trial based on prior art, even if the patent office had missed it before. Am I Day Dreaming (patent pending ) or is it really so?

[Valentin Crettaz]

There was once a big discussion on the aspectj-users mailing list about this issue. You can search the aspectj-users mailing archive with the keyword "Patent".
[ September 19, 2003: Message edited by: Valentin Crettaz ]

[Lasse Koskela]

It seems that the general opinion is not to worry (based on reading a couple of posts in the Eclipse discussion forum that Valentin referred to).

[Ramnivas Laddad]

I am not a lawyer and all that� My opinion after observing the discussion and reading MPL (under which AspectJ is released) matches that of Lasse. I don�t think we need to worry.
-Ramnivas