[MPlayer-users] MPlayer patent issues NOVIRUS

[Richard.Petrie at trendcomms.com]

> On Sat, 11 Jun 2005 10:52:17 +0200
> Reimar Döffinger <Reimar.Doeffinger at stud.uni-karlsruhe.de> wrote:
> 
> > libdts is just one recent example of what can happen - it never gets 
to
> > the stage where someone actually checks if the claims are valid.
> > The current completely obfuscated proposal thus would provide zero
> > protection to us, no matter what the proponents claim you can patent 
with
> > it and what not, since the only place you can find that out is court.
> 
> It's not the only example, but the most prominent to us.
> 
> Actualy the situation is like this: Companies register
> tons of patents. Most of these patents are accepted as they
> are, although they do not contain anything technicaly new,
> are not precise and no implementation is provided. Especialy
> in the video coding filed a damn lot of patents are just rephrasings
> of long time known mathematical formulas, methods or properties
> of real signals. Thus a lot of the patents that are around these
> days are invalid.
> 
> What makes this so difficult is, that it doesn't matter whether
> the patent is valid or not, as no single person or hobbist group
> (that's what OSS developers are) can defend himself against
> patent claims, as these have to be sorted out in curt and this
> costs a damn lot. Especialy as there are lots of tactics to
> prolonge such a trial (just have a look at IBM vs SCO).
> Even if someone got the money and won the first round, the
> company is most likely to file an appeal and the whole
> thing strats again, with even huger costs.
> 
> Over the past years, while watching all this software patent
> nonsense, i realized that the problem does not lie within the
> way what software is and how it is produced, nor how we develop
> code, but within the patent system itself. Just have a look
> outside, in every technical and non-technical field there are
> tons of patents on trivial stuff, anything that a first grader
> could tell you too. It's just written complicated enough to
> pass a patent review. If anyone comes up with a new idea, ie
> one that is really something new and not an application of already
> known stuff to a new field, he'll face imediatly thousands of
> patent claims, because he'll be using some general basics that
> are coverd by those fake patents. Thus it becomes impossible to
> even develop (not to talk about patenting) something new if
> you do not have already a huge asset of patents yourself to
> fend of any patent claim. 
> On the other hand, if you patent something, the chances
> are very low that you'll ever find out that someone uses
> your invention w/o paying patent fees. Thus the patent
> system doesn't really protect your invention.
> 
> And this is not only a problem in the field of software,
> but a problem in all technical and scientific areas!
> 
> Thus i came to the conclusion, that the patent system as
> we have now does more harm than good and should be replaced
> by something better. But as IMHO there is no system that would
> work out in most cases and couldn't be easily missused, i suggest
> that the whole patent system should be dropped and instead
> inventions should be either protected by trade secrets 
> or freely shared among all. 
> 
> No more problems with a not working patent system. No
> more problems with a not working patent protection.
> And everyone can share a free exchange of information.

Trying to understand the Media player specific concern further, 
if I purchase a license for  the MPEG-2 Patent Portfolio and 
the same for MPEG-4 then does this cover me or is this only part 
of the story?

thanks,

Richard

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