It would be nice to know wich patents, in the ones we are interested in, are
enforced or not.
As an example, "Xor" is patented, but the patend is (hopefully) not
enforced.
But some patents of very basic things are sometimes tryed to be enforced,
like "Save as" wich is own by Wang Imaging or "Multimedia encyclopedia"
owned by Grolier.
I think the main problem could be the patents who are suddendly enforced by
their owners, but were not in the past, like the LZW of Unisys used in Gif.
An interesting thing is the case where we do not release an encoder or
decoder but some source code, like in the case of Lame. Unix users are used
to .configure and .install, and by this way things like Lame are perfectly
legals when released as source code only.
BTW, do you know any server where we could download the patents texts in pdf
or something else for free?
Gabriel Bouvigne - France
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
icq: 12138873
MP3' Tech: www.mp3tech.org
----- Message d'origine -----
De : Mike Oliphant <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
� : <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Envoy� : dimanche 4 juillet 1999 09:35
Objet : Re: [MP3 ENCODER] new audio compression
> On Sun, 4 Jul 1999, Mark Taylor wrote:
>
> > Related to patents, today on slashdot there is a story about Corel
> > being sued by the patent holder who came up with the brilliant idea of
> > side-by-side text file comparisons. The one good thing in the
> > article: it said only 1 in 50 of these types of law suites ever
> > succeed.
>
> The problem, however, is that they actually get decided in court (instead
> of the patent office making sensible decisions). When a small company, or
> even worse, an independant free software developer, gets a "pay up or shut
> down" letter, they shut down. Even if you think the patent is ridiculous,
> you need to have the resources to fight it in court. Bad situation...
>
>
> Mike
>
>
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