- From: Gareth Hay <gazhay@gmail.com>
- Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2007 10:30:54 +0000
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. >>> >>> -- >>> Ian Hickson U+1047E ) >>> \._.,--....,'``. fL >>> http://ln.hixie.ch/ U+263A /, _.. \ _ >>> \ ;`._ ,. >>> Things that are impossible just take longer. `._.-(,_..'-- >>> (,_..'`-.;.' > -- > Business Development Manager > Fluendo S.A. > Office Phone: +34 933175153 > Mobile Phone: +34 678608328 >
Received on Friday, 23 March 2007 03:30:54 UTC