Software patents shouldn't exist to begin with.
MPEG-2 Patents Have Expired
11–20 of 180 posts
Re: MPEG-2 Patents Have Expired
#12Software patents shouldn't exist to begin with.
This is more algorithm than software isn’t it? and I suspect MPEG2 has had hardware implementations since day one - so I’m not sure it’s that clear cut. And frankly, at the time it was state of the art and I imagine requires significant investment. The patent duration is far too long though.
What do you believe the difference is? To me, software and algorithms are the same thing.
Re: MPEG-2 Patents Have Expired
#13An obsolete movie format, but a large amount of stored media exists in this format so ultimately a win. I would like to say something to the effect of there being just a tiny bit less rent-seeking in the world today, but I'm sure by tomorrow the seeds will be planted for millions more rent-seeking opportunities in the future.
Re: MPEG-2 Patents Have Expired
#14An obsolete movie format, but a large amount of stored media exists in this format so ultimately a win. I would like to say something to the effect of there being just a tiny bit less rent-seeking in the world today, but I'm sure by tomorrow the seeds will be planted for millions more rent-seeking opportunities in the future.
Most digital TV broadcasts use MPEG-2, don't they?
Re: MPEG-2 Patents Have Expired
#15Software patents shouldn't exist to begin with.
I'm inclined to agree with you, but why?
Re: MPEG-2 Patents Have Expired
#16Software patents shouldn't exist to begin with.
I'm inclined to agree with you, but why?
The problem is, over the past few years software has been moving way too fast for the standard patent timeframe. Patents on software last longer than it would take for a competitor to re-invent a trade secret: the result being that they actually slow down progression.
Ideally, we would adjust the term of every patent grant to match (or scale with) the difficulty that a competitor would have to go through to re-invent it. An approximation to that is having different patent durations for different fields (shorter for software), and an approximation to that is not having software patents at all.
Re: MPEG-2 Patents Have Expired
#17An obsolete movie format, but a large amount of stored media exists in this format so ultimately a win. I would like to say something to the effect of there being just a tiny bit less rent-seeking in the world today, but I'm sure by tomorrow the seeds will be planted for millions more rent-seeking opportunities in the future.
Most digital TV broadcasts use MPEG-2, don't they?
From 2022 some European countries (Germany, Italy, Czech Republic, Slovakia) will pass their broadcasting system to DVB-T2 with H.265. Since January 2017 new TVs must support HEVC decoding.
Sadly, no AV1...
Re: MPEG-2 Patents Have Expired
#18Software patents shouldn't exist to begin with.
I'm inclined to agree with you, but why?
Re: MPEG-2 Patents Have Expired
#19An obsolete movie format, but a large amount of stored media exists in this format so ultimately a win. I would like to say something to the effect of there being just a tiny bit less rent-seeking in the world today, but I'm sure by tomorrow the seeds will be planted for millions more rent-seeking opportunities in the future.
Most digital TV broadcasts use MPEG-2, don't they?
There are provisions to use h.264 within that transport stream, but I'm not sure if any stations actually broadcast with that.
Re: MPEG-2 Patents Have Expired
#20This is a striking example of the need to shorten software patents; if we really must have them at all.
As best i recall they started out as production process patents that involved computers to monitor and time.
Before that, specific instances of code were protected by copyright. And is what allowed Compaq to produce one of the first proper clean room IBM PC clones (because they could defend in court that they had not copied any of the IBM BIOS code), and thus leading to where we sit today.