Gregory Maxwell wrote:
On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 3:17 PM, Frank Murphy
<frankly3d(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Patents are *currently* illegal in Europe, (though they may be granted).
> The patents offices being self-funding and all that.
Codec patents are generally not 'software patents' in the common
patent-speak meaning of the words.
Not if you ask the patent lawyers, no.
The bulk of codec patent holders are European companies (I.e.
Fraunhofer, Nokia, etc). The collection of royalties for codecs is a
multi-billion dollar a year industry. There are many well funded
companies spending considerable amounts of money licensing codecs,
even on products which they only intend to market in Europe. On that
basis, I think it's safe to conclude that there is more to the
situation than you are suggesting.
That's certainly true. None the less, Frank is right.
These patents *are* illegal, if you read what the convention and the national
laws actually say, and yet they are granted by routine. Whether they would
hold up in court doesn't matter much apparently. They are effective anyway.
Björn Persson