[MPlayer-users] MPlayer patent issues NOVIRUS

[Reimar Döffinger]

Hi,
On Thu, Jun 16, 2005 at 05:49:59PM +0100, Richard.Petrie at trendcomms.com wrote:
> 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?

No, even if you leave out the hundreds of patents that nobody knows
about (also because most of the should never have been granted), there
still is e.g. Microsofts patent on the ASF format, Real certainly has a
few as well etc. pp.
Not to mention that having the official "Patent Portfolio" doesn't
neccessarily mean that you have all patents in the area (though you
could say those that aren't part of it were not enforced as they should
have been, meaning a lack of due diligence and thus are invalid, but
even if the law says it is like this - which I'm not completely sure
about, since I'm only reporting what I "heard" elsewhere - you would
have to prove their invalidity in court :-( ).
But it sure is the question if being completely safe is the point.
You can't use any software without risking to break a patent anyway,
unless we succeed in convincing everyone that software patents are a bad
thing.
So in short: The whole patent system needs a significant overhaul, but
we as software developer would be quite okay if at least we got our
peace in a separate way (in addition to that fact that software is a bit
different and also has protection in the form of copyright. So allowing
patents, too, IMHO would be the same as allowing patents on e.g. music).

Greetings,
Reimar Döffinger