I have been reading up a bit on GPL and patents and it makes interesting reading. What happens when someone writes patented code under a GPL license? GPL mandates that the code and any modifications to it should be made freely available with any binary distributions. But if that were to be done, then the code distribution can be a patent violation! To complicate matters, GPL is universal while patents are enforced locally within the regions where that patent has been granted. So this seems like GPL and patent laws are like oil and water. Recognizing this seeming contradiction, GPL3 has some points that relate to this.
If you are someone who is interested in open source and commercializing products based on open source, this must make interesting reading...
Copyright and Linux, GPL patent issues
