Re: Fw: [ft-devel] FreeType 2.4.0 has been released

[Ken Sharp]

At 11:20 29/07/2010 +0200, Werner LEMBERG wrote:

> can you answer this mail?

No problem :-)


> >  I. IMPORTANT CHANGES
> >    - Since May  2010, all  patents  regarding  the TrueType  bytecode
> >      interpreter have expired worldwide.  Consequently, we now define
> >      TT_CONFIG_OPTION_BYTECODE_INTERPRETER by  default (and  undefine
> >      TT_CONFIG_OPTION_UNPATENTED_HINTING).
>
> I think that not yet expired US5325479.
> US5325479 is until June,2011 ?  (1994-06-28 + 17year)
>
> Please teach expired grounds. Kind Regards

I did the research on this for the Ghostscript project, which was reviewed 
by a US patent lawyer, so I'm reasonably sure of my ground.

If you look at Ghostscript bug #690621 :
http://bugs.ghostscript.com/show_bug.cgi?id=690621
you can find a complete description of all the relevant patents I was able 
to locate, their filing and grant dates and an explanation of how I arrived 
at the expiration dates, based on the patent law in the country of application.

The short answer for US patent US5325479 is that on the USPTO web site:

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=43&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=5325479&OS=5325479&RS=5325479

there is a notice which states that 'The portion of the term of this patent 
subsequent to October 13, 2009 has been disclaimed'. (Just below the 
Inventors and Assignee in the box below the Abstract)

To me this means (and our patent lawyer seems to agree) that Apple have 
given up the right to that patent from October 13 2009. This is the date 
when the original patent on which it depends, US5155805, expired.



                Ken