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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

#261

Post by shubb »

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…

There are alternatives to patents - for example hosting research intensive parts of your system in the cloud.

This is pretty much what is happening with speech recognition these days among other things.

No need to worry about opensource, or the fragility of patents, when you keep your technology a secret.

Another approach is to use trade secrets - you encrypt parts of your application - reducing performance - enabling you to sue anyone who decompiles it in order to replicate, or indeed interface with it.

Patents would actually seem the least of these evils, if they were only less broken.

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

#262

Post by jordigh »

rawfan wrote: post #250
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.

Software patents are banned in Europe, so the whole shebang is really only relevant in the US. While the patent offices in Europe allowed software concepts to be patented, these patents are not enforcable.

The situation is a lot more nuanced than that. After all, this is a German company holding mp3 patents. While software itself is not patentable in Europe (or, for that matter, in the US; they argue that it's not software but a process or a "method and a device" that they are patenting), there is a lot of wiggling around the law that results in software patents still being applicable.

http://fsfe.org/campaigns/swpat/swpat.en.html

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

#263

Post by arundelo »

Millennium wrote: post #169
incompatible wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't MP3 a royalty-free audio format now that its patents have expired?

As I understand it, this is the year that the last of the MP3 patents expire, nd some already have, but there are still two left. One of them expires on August 29, and the last one expires on December 30. It seems kind of odd to do this so late in the patents' life, though. I understand the general theory behind a last-minute cash grab, but you generally can't take "last-minute" quite this literally. Why wait so long…

Wikipedia says that MP3's last patent expired in the United States last month:

If only the known MP3 patents filed by December 1992 are considered, then MP3 decoding has been patent-free in the US since 22 September 2015 [...] If the longest-running patent mentioned in the aforementioned references is taken as a measure, then the MP3 technology became patent-free in the United States on 16 April 2017 [...].

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3#Licensing.2C_ownership_and...

Wikipedia also says (unless I'm missing something) that all the MP3 patents have already expired everywhere else too. If this is true, then Fraunhofer is ending their licensing program just because they don't want to bother getting people to pay for something they can now legally have for free.

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

#264

Post by rustynails »

arximboldi wrote: post #247
sbov wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a wide range here. Complaining on a message board where most people agree with you is basically zero effort. Devoting your life's work to it is a ton of effort. There is a middle ground here. My general thought is: you should, on a regular basis, feel at least a little bit of pain due to your opinions. If you don't then your opinion is probably worthless to society.

> My general thought is: you should, on a regular basis, feel at least a little bit of pain due to your opinions. If you don't then your opinion is probably worthless to society. I've reread this sentence a few times... and it is actually quite deeper that it first seemed on a more superficial read. Thanks a lot for your comment.

I would be very careful of that advice. There are many ideologies that use that exact thought process as a justification for divisiveness and intolerance, especially in an echo chamber like Facebook.

Is there another side to the argument? Have you investigated it? Is the constraint or division unjustifiable? Who/what is being excluded in that argument? Many patents and anything politically correct fail that test. Eg, do we need a "women in engineering"* or should that be "people in engineering"? If you have "women in engineering" (because of percentages), do you have "men in veterinary science" because of percentages too? You see? Feelings may tell you one thing, but considering divisiveness, exclusion and an opposite view tell you something entirely different.

If people asked that last question more often, the world would be a much better place. Leaving the criteria as a logical reasoning rather than a feeling would eliminate a lot of prejudice, intolerance, division and constraint.

* I'm married to a qualified and practising engineer. We discussed this topic when she went to a "women in engineering" meeting. When I asked if we should hold a "black people in engineering" meeting, she said "of course not, why would we?". Now we agree on the divisiveness/exclusion test as well as the inclusiveness test. Be warned, my views are not popular.

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

#265

Post by statictype »

rayiner wrote: post #66
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.

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).

This is a nice concise explanation, thanks!

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

#266

Post by gregmac »

jonny_eh wrote: post #88
rayiner wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Why not grant patents to the self-driving car as a whole? In Canada, you cannot patent software unless it's within the scope of a physical product, like a car. Also, PageRank clearly doesn't need a patent. Google's done just fine against competitors that have ripped off their technique.

> Why not grant patents to the self-driving car as a whole?

How do you do that?

The first person to think of the concept of "self-driving car" gets the patent? That will just lead to a flood of patents on things that don't exist yet -- basically a patent troll's dream.

Perhaps the first company to build a working prototype? What happens to all the other companies that almost have a working prototype -- do they now have to sit on the sidelines for 10 years?

How do you even know what a "working prototype" is in that scenario? Is it acceptable if it is just capable of driving on straight roads during sunny days with no other cars or people around?

I think patents on specific, narrow pieces can make sense: for example a laser-based 3D vision system, or a specific algorithm that identifies people about to walk in front of the car (even that is tough, because there's a thousands of very distinct approaches to that problem).

Patenting the entire system (the "self-driving car") makes about as much sense as say, Herman Miller patenting the concept of a wheeled office chair. They can patent elements of their lift mechanism, specific wheel designs, or arm adjustments, but not the concept of combining wheels and a place to sit.

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

#268

Post by amelius »

realusername wrote: post #234
amelius wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can my friends who studied medicine, physics, and mechanical engineering make money with their inventions, while I, software engineer, cannot?

I've never seen any software worth patenting unlike with other disciplines, maybe it would help the case for software patents if they would be a need for it

I don't see why if someone invents a clever way to perform e.g. fluid dynamics simulations in software, that can't be patented just like in other disciplines.

Not all software is just shopping baskets, and website glue logic.

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

#270

Post by Crespyl »

wbl wrote: post #86
vkou wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

Not true for compression patents.

I would argue that all software patents should include complete source code and build details necessary to compile a working version.

Something like MP3 or h265 represent nontrivial investments in information theory, and I'm basically okay with patents granting a (temporary) exclusive licensing period in exchange for sharing the practical code and theoretical work.

Patenting something like "one click ordering" or "facilitating inter-personal communication by sending audio over the internet" is just ridiculous.

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