Hi Christian,
My main concern is simply to avoid the issue altogether.
I do agree that patents exist and have been granted, but I just can't
see how they are ever going to be enforced at all.
For example, a patent issued in the US is infringed by a UK company,
where the patent would not be held up by current UK law, (or worse
*may* be valid in the UK but not under EU law), where is the case
heard? Who's law applies?
I know this is a trivial example, but I would just prefer to not have
to feed a lawyer's pockets over this issue.
Gareth
On 23 Mar 2007, at 11:49, Christian F.K. Schaller wrote:
Hi Gareth,
This is a strange way of looking at the issue. Once a patent is
granted
it is by definition valid and enforceable. It is the people
opposing it
who have to prove their non-legality at that point and not the
other way
around. So sure a lot of software patents might be challenged around
Europe, but the main burden of proving they are non-valid falls on the
people opposing the patent and not the patent holder. So until someone
have successfully challenged all the patents involved and gotten them
found invalid they are by definition valid. A granted patent is valid
until a court of law finds it invalid, not invalid until a court of
law
finds it valid.
Be aware that I do not support the idea of software patents, not in
the
slightest, but one have to accept that in many places around the world
they are 'the law of the land'. One should work to change the law, not
pretend it doesn't exist.
Christian
On Fri, 2007-03-23 at 10:30 +0000, Gareth Hay wrote:
As i said in a previous post, this is a very grey area.[1][2]
So much so that many of the granted patents are being opposed, and
until the outcome of these oppositions, neither one of us can comment
on the true legality of them.
I would suggest backing away from any such areas where software
patentability becomes an issue. Case law hasn't sufficiently
established the legality in my country, europe and many, many
territories.
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patents#In_Europe
[2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Software_patents_under_the_European_Patent_Convention#Inventive_step_
tes
t
On 23 Mar 2007, at 10:02, Christian F.K. Schaller wrote:
It is an Urban Legend that there are no software patents in the EU.
True
enough there is no 'EU' software patents, but a lot of member
states do
have them. I suggest going the MPEG LA's webpage and looking at the
patent lists they have there for MPEG4. You will notice that a
lot of
the patents are from EU countries.
Christian
On Fri, 2007-03-23 at 08:35 +0000, Gareth Hay wrote:
Not in the EU, no such thing as a software patent.
On 23 Mar 2007, at 04:55, Ian Hickson wrote:
On Fri, 23 Mar 2007, Robert Sayre wrote:
MPEG-4 is proprietary, because it is covered by patents.
I hate to be the one to break this to you, but CSS is covered by
patents,
HTML is covered by patents, the DOM is covered by patents,
JavaScript is
covered by patents, and so forth. Proprietary technologies are
those that
are under the control of a single vendor. MPEG-4 is not
proprietary.
It's not available under royalty free licensing. But it is not
under the
control of a single vendor. That is the important difference, not
whether
the technology is patented or not.
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Fluendo S.A.
Office Phone: +34 933175153
Mobile Phone: +34 678608328
