On 8/30/06, Attila Kinali <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Wed, 30 Aug 2006 09:06:37 -0600
"Lance Hanlen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I really want to emphasize that patents are not so bad unless you're a
> giant corporation.
Not fully true. Patents are a big problem if you are a small company
or a free time project like 99.999% of the OSS projects are. In that
case you will have a very hard time to defent yourself against patent
claims, no matter how invalid the patent is. The problem with the
current system si, that _you_ have to prove that the claim is invalid,
which is a matter of a curt case with lots of experts involved and
thus costs a lot of money.
I realized you're absolutely right to be suspicious of patents.
Contributing members and coordinators of OSS projects have a
responsibility to be more paranoid than a cop -- never give anyone
anything they can use against you. OSS is targeted full-time for
political reasons, and that's one of the downsides of OSS. You don't
have the luxury, like I do as a commercial producer, to not give
patents a second thought.
I am coming from software patents. I know that there is neither
investment nor stock valuation until your product is patented. Not
because you want to restrict its use but because you need to show a
lawyer-certified piece of paper that proves that you have a "thing"
that you can sell.
So in my world, everyone patents everything, and no one cares about
patents until you spot a firm with $600 million dollars in excess
revenue that's doing something you remember patenting once.
When it gets to that stage, everyone just has a chat and it's ok. To
pursue a patent infringement, I'm out of pocket, absolute minimum
$500,000, no matter how small the other company is. And that's just to
initiate proceedings, hoping the other guy backs down. If I want to
take it all the way to a decision, at least ten times that, usually
much much more.
I just don't think about it. Neither does anyone I know. There are
more fun ways to make a living!
Add to that, most patents are ephemeral, they depend on a
technological context that's obsolete by the time the patented product
gets to market. Even if the patent lasts 25 years or whatever (I
honestly don't know any details about patents and I file at least one
per month) the context makes the technology out of date the following
year and no one will ever profit by infringing on that patent. It was
filed so that your investors and shareholders believed you enough to
fund the R&D and that purpose was served.
But if you give Microsoft a chance they'll gleefully come for an OSS
project whether it profits them or not. So the bottom line is that you
do have to be careful, and I think Theora is relatively safe.
OTOH, The MPEG4 licensing scheme (a subsection of the standard that
goes by the unforgettable name IPIMP) is designed to be painless and
eminently affordable, no matter how tight your profit margins.
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