Thank you Steve, and I read a bit more on the web on this subject including your own well reasoned page at http://www.soft-switch.org/patents/index.html
However, despite wide acceptance of the patentability of such codecs (unfortunately), whether they are in fact software patents or not appears to be a matter of opinion. The FSF and Fedora both refer to codec patents as being software patents. http://endsoftpatents.org/2011/02/usa-patent-reform-not-enough/ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Software_Patents A quick google search of both terms will show that there are a great many people who see codec patents as software patents, so I don't think I am alone there. Though I think I can see how you differentiate them, I'm not sure there are any simple rules on how you draw that line between them, and that is very problematic. Before the advent of powerful personal computers, codec patents would have few societal issues. I think now, the harm caused by these patents are greater than the benefit. Much like the harm caused by current copyright laws out weigh the current benefits. I was disappointed to read that New Zealand's patent reforms did not go as far as to invalidate codec patents, but I do look forward to g.729 entering the PD in 2016ish and joining MP3s which also recently became an unencumbered format in most countries. On Sun, 2013-10-06 at 00:13 +0800, Steve Underwood wrote: > On 10/05/2013 11:07 PM, Darryl Moore wrote: > > > > [blink] > > > > umm... they are software patents. > > > Really? Do you have expert legal opinion on that? I've never seen anyone > competent dispute the patentability of applied signal processing. Such > patents get issued all over the world. There are a couple of software > patents related to G.729, but those are not part of the essential pool > of patents, and those are probably US only. -- _____________________________________________________________________ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- New to Asterisk? Join us for a live introductory webinar every Thurs: http://www.asterisk.org/hello asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
