Oops, I had forgotten about that post... I guess I should (re-)read my [chemweb] messages! It may be old hat but it does seem to have resurfaced and there is current discussion regarding this on xml-dev and by the W3C (see http://www.w3.org/2003/08/patent). I've not read the patent in question but I may have used "plugin" incorrectly. I think I should have used "embedded object" and to my, possibly naive, way of thinking this includes Java applets (whether open source or not). I have to admit to being confused by this and look forward to being enlightened. The IC chemistry homepage has always been interesting (I can see the molecule), although I find that almost all Java is very slow to load on my machine... I support open source, although purely as a user and not a programmer. Anthony Lewis -----Original Message----- From: Rzepa, Henry [mailto:h.rzepa@imperial.ac.uk] Sent: 29 August 2003 15:24 To: Chemistry Webmasters Discussion list Subject: Re: [chemweb] Plugins and Patents

Hello,

I've been reading about the possibility that plugins may have been patented, which would have, I think, some implications for the interactive display chemical data.

This was an ancient rumour which surfaced about 2 years ago. I posted to this list a month or so back, urging all to adopt an opensource solution to the above, recommending jmol (http://jmol.sourceforge.net ). As it happens, if you go to http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/ the molecule which (might) appear on the right is displayed using JMol, and indeed its encoded as a CML file

I'm wondering if anyone has any views or further insight they may care to share?

Having mentioned opensource, I would bring this to people's attention "On September 1st the European Commission is going to vote a revised version of the European Patentability rules. The proposed revision contains a set of serious challenges to Open Source development since regulation regarding software patents will be broadly extended and might forbid independent development of innovative (Open Source and not) software-based solutions. The European Open Source community is very concerned about the upcoming new regulation and has organized a demo protest for August 27, asking Open Source supporting sites to change their home pages to let everyone know what is going on at the European Parliament. The Apache Software Foundation has decided to support this initiative, and this is why you are seeing this page. For further information please see http://swpat.ffii.org and http://petition.eurolinux.org . -- Henry Rzepa. +44 (020) 7594 5774 (Voice); +44 (0870) 132 3747 (eFax) http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/ Dept. Chemistry, Imperial College London, SW7 2AZ, UK. _______________________________________________ chemweb mailing list chemweb@imperial.ac.uk http://mailman.ic.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/chemweb List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@ic.ac.uk)