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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

#181

Post by Kadin »

Xeoncross wrote: post #160
djsumdog wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really glad New Zealand decided to disallow software patents. I wish more countries would follow suit.

Has any action been taken against them by other countries or even private industries for this?

IIRC one of the things that the TPP was supposed to do was "harmonize" (read: ram the US idea of down the throats of everyone else) software patents and other relevant aspects of IP law that were near and dear to major US companies.

Since TPP is dead, the IP-dependent industries may start looking for a new venue, as they appear to have been putting a lot of eggs in that particular basket. But there may be a short-term reprieve for countries not currently toeing the US party line.

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

#182

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#183

Post by KKKKkkkk1 »

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.

But MP3 is what made it possible to share music on the Internet and to play music off of iPod-like music players. Shouldn't the inventors benefit from their work? Don't algorithmicists deserve the same protections that say electrical engineers do?

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

#184

Post by dingo_bat »

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #183
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.

But MP3 is what made it possible to share music on the Internet and to play music off of iPod-like music players. Shouldn't the inventors benefit from their work? Don't algorithmicists deserve the same protections that say electrical engineers do?

No, apparently all software is created in free time, for hobby purposes. That's why all software should be free, open source and patent-free. Software devs can make an easy living off supporting their software.

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

#185

Post by wbl »

chc wrote: post #157
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With your ideas about patents someone should do it out of the kindness of their heart I guess. Is that what has driven most technological advancements of the human race? In your software-patentless world, why would a genius choose to work in software as opposed to another field inventing patentable tangible objects where he or she will be monetarily rewarded for it and able to make a living? Don't say you are already…

Software patents aren't particularly useful for making money with software. Hackers produce code, which is protected by copyright, and that's how the law protects them from having their work stolen. Patents are a bad match for software, and are mainly used for two things: 1. Trolls use them to seek rent from independent creations. 2. Companies that are not purely trolls but need a vector to attack another company som…

What about 4: research institute that invents an audio compression method? The work that goes into mp3 isn't just coding the method.

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

#186

Post by URSpider94 »

thisrod wrote: post #164
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> someone has to fight the good fight That's a noble, if politically naïve, attitude. Societies, like Congress, have a limited bandwidth for problem solving. The way we prioritize what gets solved and what doesn't, as well as how to solve it, is "politics". (This is more a matter of definition than quibbling.) There are various political institutions, and individuals have varying degrees of influence over them, depen…

Here's a reform to the copyright law that just occurred to me. If you buy a copy of a published work, then you're allowed to copy and distribute it as you see fit, provided that you pay the creator the same royalty that they were paid for the copy you bought. Other restrictions such as moral rights would still be in force. That seems to get a lot of incentives right. Publishers have to pay artists decent royalties, a…

I think you are confusing the issues. TFA is about the license fees paid to Fraunhofer for the MP3 codec, for which they owned the underlying and now-expired patents.

MP3 is not an encrypted codec, the format itself is quite open and doesn't place any real restrictions on redistributing music -- in fact, most of the original music sharing sites like Napster traded exclusively in MP3. The use of MP3 has no bearing on copyright or music piracy.

The real issue is that software developers had to pay a royalty to Fraunhofer to distribute copies of MP3 players or encoders. That made it impossible to incorporate MP3 into a free (as in speech) OS like GNU/Linux.

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

#187

Post by caf »

toast0 wrote: post #158
JulianMorrison wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The major trouble with patents, and the thing that puts them in a special category of nuisance all of their own, is that it's fundamentally impossible to know that a thing is unencumbered until each particular claim to the contrary has been hashed out in court, at ruinous expense. And there is no legal proscription against patent owners letting you think you were safe for years, and then popping up to cream off the f…

Can't we take winamp's initial release from April 21, 1997, add 1 year for late filing, and say anything it did is unencumbered by April 21, 2017? (Let's ignore patents filed before June 8, 1995 and issued later, since we're approaching the end of those, I hope)

WinPlay3 was released by Fraunhofer themselves in September 1995.

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

#188

Post by abstrakraft »

toast0 wrote: post #158
JulianMorrison wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The major trouble with patents, and the thing that puts them in a special category of nuisance all of their own, is that it's fundamentally impossible to know that a thing is unencumbered until each particular claim to the contrary has been hashed out in court, at ruinous expense. And there is no legal proscription against patent owners letting you think you were safe for years, and then popping up to cream off the f…

Can't we take winamp's initial release from April 21, 1997, add 1 year for late filing, and say anything it did is unencumbered by April 21, 2017? (Let's ignore patents filed before June 8, 1995 and issued later, since we're approaching the end of those, I hope)

If you can demonstrate standing and pay a lawyer a ton of money, then yes, you could argue that.

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

#189

Post by codeplea »

josaka wrote: post #171
JulianMorrison wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The major trouble with patents, and the thing that puts them in a special category of nuisance all of their own, is that it's fundamentally impossible to know that a thing is unencumbered until each particular claim to the contrary has been hashed out in court, at ruinous expense. And there is no legal proscription against patent owners letting you think you were safe for years, and then popping up to cream off the f…

>it's fundamentally impossible to know that a thing is unencumbered One noteworthy exception, which plays a much bigger role in slower-moving industries, is that an exact copy of something sold over more time than the pendency of any patent in existence (mostly less than 23-24 years) is clear. But the larger point holds. Comparing patent claims to products and prior art is hard and expensive.

It's not even enough that the thing you're selling be an exact copy of something old. Your manufacturing process or other business processes (sales channels, support channels) could also be infringing on some newer patent.
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