License/Patent clarity? [Was: Re: [SCIM] SCIM and Wubi

[Hideki Hiura]

James,

> From: James Su <suzhe at tsinghua.org.cn>
> Oh, yes, you are right. Now I understand. And the good news is, scim 
> table module can handle this issue already. If you give me the 1-to-1 
> table, I can try to make a dvorak-wubi table.

I have a naive question on the license/patent clarity on WuBi.

IIIMF has WuBI for years but only shipped with its distribution on
Solaris and Java Desktop System under redistribution license. Because
it's just a table, I tried but I was unable to opensource WuBi,
because I was told that the idea/concept of WuBi is patented or
strictly licensed or something legal which prevented me to get through
the clearance. 

If this is just that I got a wrong information, it would be great!
so that I can revive the project to opensource WuBi, but otherwise...

Would someone who has an access to the patent infomation in China 
be possible to check the patent database?

I happened to get an AI from Japanese govt party, on the way back from
Beijing, to investigate input method related patents, triggered by the
meeting with CESI/SAC two weeks ago,which you were a part of it,
James.  So far I've skimmed only roughly through the patents filed in
the U.S. and Japan, and found over 400 patents on input methods were
filed in Japan.  They apparently cover quite bit of technology from
basic to advanced.

Patent clearance is very important part of security, and any one of
patent infringements could be a show-stopper.

--
hiura@{freestandards.org,OpenI18N.org,li18nux.org,unicode.org,sun.com} 
Chair, OpenI18N.org/The Free Standards Group          http://www.OpenI18N.org
Architect/Sr. Staff Engineer, Sun Microsystems, Inc, USA   eFAX: 509-693-8356