On Tue, 26 Oct 1999, Nils Faerber wrote:
> > Dont get me rolling. Nothing involved in lame should be patentable.
> I fully agree but we have this damn patent from FhG IIS and have two
> choices:
> 1. We try to ignore it until someone gets caught.
> 2. We try to find a legal way to distribute and use Lame.
There is no way to distribute Lame as free software without risk. In the
US, software patents are so rampent that almost anything you create is
coverd by some patent. So lame may very well not be violating any MP3
patents, but thats still no good... because "Storage and retreaval of
electronicaly represented auditory wavform information" is probably
patented.
Worse off, since we aren't patent lawyers, and can't afford one (and prob
it's in our best intrest not to talk to one): We legally can't even
decided that "an apratus for automatic dog feeding" doesn't apply to lame.
> Again agreement. I think thta patent laws in the US are rediculous! Did you
> hear about that case where a man came to a doctor with some strange desease.
> The doctor sent a blood sample to a company which then found a gene defect
> in this man's blood and then patented his desease? After that the man tried
> to claim the rights on his desease for himself and lost!
The patent laws are stupid, combin that with uneducated examiners...
> But lawyers and states are much more powerful than a single free software
> developing individual. We cannot change the law by ignoring it in the case
> of Lame.
They have always been more powerful then single people, but that doesn't
stop people from standing up against them. (though sometimes it stops them
from winning. :) )
> We should come to a decision with what to do with Lame first. The second
> thing to do is to support the FSF in fighting against software patents which
> they are already doing.
I don't see that there is anything we can do with lame. Even if someone
wanted to make a 'licenced' copy, this would not comply with the GPL.
> > To further complicate things, US law states that you legally can not have
> > ANY understanding of a patent unless you are a patent lawyer.
> Ooops!
> Nice niche ;)
> That would be the same kind of trick used to distribute Lame legally: Just
> distribute the patch not the whole encoder. So for the us we all claim not
> to have ANY understanding of patents and patent laws ;)
It wouldn't actually make it legal.
> But what if a patent lawyer tells you?
You don't ask.
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