Lance Hanlen wrote:
On 9/6/06, Lourens Veen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Tuesday 05 September 2006 19:47, Lance Hanlen wrote:
> On 9/5/06, Lourens Veen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > On Thursday 31 August 2006 19:51, Lance Hanlen wrote:
> > > I realized you're absolutely right to be suspicious of patents.
> >
> > As an additional argument:
> > http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/5312696.stm
>
> This is extremely interesting! I have often pontificated that any
> algorithm can be "improved" past its patented version. If these guys
> really did find a way to beat the MP3 standard, and they can win, all
> our patent worries are over! We just keep improving things :D
Well, that's one of the points of the patent system. The problem is that
many patents (probably including the MP3 ones) start with very broad
claims that will never hold up anyway (e.g. "apparatus for representing
data representing audio in a compact manner") and then narrow it down
to more specific claims about how they do that. The patent office
accepts these patents, and anyone infringing them by doing more or less
the same in a different manner will first have to go to court to get a
judge to dismiss the broader claims, possibly uphold the narrower
claims, and then decide whether the new implementation infringes upon
the claims that are left. That takes a lot of time and money...
Lourens
I read somewhere that the first corporations were formed so that
people could build a bridge to cross a river. Things have changed, and
I don't think patents are going to be very important in their original
mandate to restrict intellectual property. In any case, I don't think
there's any danger in developing MPEG4 and Theora codecs. There won't
be any patent issues that can't be overcome.
There is no problem with MPEG4. They will grant anyone a license and
there is no charge for the first 50K units per year. There is a small
royalty per unit after that. If MP3 were like that, there would be no
problem either. I would be happy to send Thompson my $2.50 for an MP3
license but they have a rather high minimum.
IIUC, the AAC is licensed in a reasonable manner like MPEG4 and Apple
uses AAC so one would think that competition would force Thompson to
revise their royalty system.
--
JRT
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