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The licensing program for MP3-related patents has been terminated

iis.fraunhofer.de

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Re: The licensing program for MP3-related patents has been terminated

#61

Post by magila »

iplaw wrote: post #46
magila wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software is already covered by copyright. Granting it parent protection as well allows software companies to double dip in a way that no other industry can.

That's certainly not true. You can protect a manufacturing process via patent, and also protect a manual on the manufacturing process via copyright. Further, you can protect machinery within the manufacturing process via patent, and also protect a manual on the machinery via copyright. This parallels software coverage. You can protect the process (the executed code resulting in affirmative steps) and the manual (the…

Your analogy doesn't quite fit. Copyright covers both the source code, which is more analogous to the schematics than the manual, and the binaries.

If a physical machine is not under patent protection you can strait up copy it and start manufacturing your own version. With software you have to go through an extra "clean room" step to get around copyright. In practice the clean room reverse engineering process is rarely utilized because it is expensive and fraught with the risk of a lawsuit from the copyright owner.

Re: The licensing program for MP3-related patents has been terminated

#62

Post by vkou »

mark-r wrote: post #40
welder wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software patents are bullshit. A patent on an invention that many people would easily develop independently of one another should not, it is argued, be granted since this impedes development. [1] 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patent#Obviousness

There's nothing unique about software that makes it more likely to be developed independently by many inventors, the same happens often with hardware patents. And the same argument applies - the patent system as a whole impedes progress as much (or more?) than it advances it.

The argument for why software patents are different is premised by why patents exist.

They exist to grant someone a monopoly in exchange for them sharing their invention with the world. If I patent a dishwasher that does not clog, I will be rewarded for my invention... But once the patent expires, a skilled engineer will be able to look at my patent, and build a dishwasher that does not clog - in far less time then it took me to build mine.

The overwhelming majority of the time, Software patents grant someone a monopoly, in exchange for them sharing nothing remotely useful to society. Looking at that software patent will not save another engineer any time whatsoever, in cloning my product.

With that kind of patent, I am using the legal system to enrich myself, without giving anything back.

Re: The licensing program for MP3-related patents has been terminated

#63

Post by louithethrid »

a3n wrote: post #43
pdeuchler wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All software can be reduced to mathematical formulae, which cannot be patented, so no. There should be no such thing as a software patent.

I'm very sympathetic to the idea of disallowing software patents; to my layman's sensibilities, so many of them are ridiculous, or after the fact grants of something that has been done in practice for years, or predatory, or all that and more. However, any physical machine or process can be reduced to the laws of physics, and you can't patent the laws of physics as far as I know. I don't think "reduced to mathematica…

Not using a patent in a product or doing further research into the area, should reduce the time of patent on a logarithmic scale.

Re: The licensing program for MP3-related patents has been terminated

#64

Post by khedoros1 »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #45
pdeuchler wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All software can be reduced to mathematical formulae, which cannot be patented, so no. There should be no such thing as a software patent.

I mean, I'm very much opposed to over-broad software patents, but that's a fairly silly argument. Anything a human being produces can be reduced to mathematical formulae.

I think what they may've been referring to is something like the Curry-Howard correspondence, which describes the mapping between computer programs and mathematical proofs. Mathematical proofs can't be patented, and it could be taken to imply that (at least some) programs/algorithms shouldn't be eligible for patent protection.

Re: The licensing program for MP3-related patents has been terminated

#65

Post by mljoe »

ggambetta wrote: post #13

I'm curious about what advantages and benefits, if any, the patents brought to Fraunhofer. Other than making mp3 slightly more difficult to work with especially on Linux, did it benefit them in any way? Did them benefit society? Coming at this from an "this is a real-life example of software patents being {good|bad}".

Fraunhofer got paid lots of money from big companies buying patent licenses. Since they are a non-profit institution dedicated to scientific research, almost everything they make finds its way back into funding scientific research.

That said, we shouldn't generalize Fraunhofer's economics to the rest of the software industry. If it was just this kind of thing I would have zero problems with it. But we should be suspicious of software patents because the patent system implicitly rewards ideas that are broad (more things a patent touches, more $$$) and non-inventive (less work to come up with a patent, more $$$). Patents can be dangerous to human progress, and the patent system encourages patents that are. A broad patent could hold a whole industry hostage for 20 years, which is an eternity in technology. I sympathize more with folks who want to get rid of the whole thing for this reason.

Re: The licensing program for MP3-related patents has been terminated

#66

Post by rayiner »

magila wrote: post #37
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you don't believe in software patents?

Software is already covered by copyright. Granting it parent protection as well allows software companies to double dip in a way that no other industry can.

Copyright and patents protect entirely different kinds of software. Copyright protects software that's more work to write than to think about (e.g. Windows). Patents protect software that's more work to think about than to write (e.g. PageRank or whatever's inside Google's self-driving cars).

Re: The licensing program for MP3-related patents has been terminated

#67

Post by throwaway91111 »

TD-Linux wrote: post #32
notaplumber wrote: post #11

Recognizing this adds legitimacy to software patents. Don't. There have been free and open source MP3 decoders for many years now.

Not believing in software patents is unlikely to change a court's mind. Instead, support formats that are royalty free from the start - Vorbis, Opus, and Codec2, for example.

How do you "support a format"? AFAIK nothing will convince Apple to release music in a better (patent-free) codec, much less convince others to dump DRM.

Re: The licensing program for MP3-related patents has been terminated

#69

Post by cookiecaper »

magila wrote: post #61
iplaw wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's certainly not true. You can protect a manufacturing process via patent, and also protect a manual on the manufacturing process via copyright. Further, you can protect machinery within the manufacturing process via patent, and also protect a manual on the machinery via copyright. This parallels software coverage. You can protect the process (the executed code resulting in affirmative steps) and the manual (the…

Your analogy doesn't quite fit. Copyright covers both the source code, which is more analogous to the schematics than the manual, and the binaries. If a physical machine is not under patent protection you can strait up copy it and start manufacturing your own version. With software you have to go through an extra "clean room" step to get around copyright. In practice the clean room reverse engineering process is rare…

Yes, this is a major issue in copyright law. In practice, there is no distinction between the patent-eligible invention (the machine) and the copyright-eligible "creative work" (the manual, or the code, in this case).

That means that copyrights can be exerted in very menacing ways, like requiring users to bypass a copy protection mechanism in order to do required maintenance, as John Deere has done. That enables John Deere to pursue anyone who doesn't use an official dealer for maintenance under the DMCA's measures criminalizing the circumvention of copy protections.

Disclaimer: Not a lawyer, probably wrong.

Re: The licensing program for MP3-related patents has been terminated

#70

Post by 2bluesc »

throwaway91111 wrote: post #67
TD-Linux wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not believing in software patents is unlikely to change a court's mind. Instead, support formats that are royalty free from the start - Vorbis, Opus, and Codec2, for example.

How do you "support a format"? AFAIK nothing will convince Apple to release music in a better (patent-free) codec, much less convince others to dump DRM.

> How do you "support a format"? AFAIK nothing will convince Apple to release music in a better (patent-free) codec, much less convince others to dump DRM.

Then you start by not giving them your money. It's a uphill battle, but someone has to fight the good fight instead of just throwing their hands-up.

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