SanDisk faces MP3 licence dispute (BBC) [LWN.net]

SanDisk faces MP3 licence dispute (BBC)

Posted Sep 5, 2006 15:09 UTC (Tue) by seyman (subscriber, #1172)
Parent article: SanDisk faces MP3 licence dispute (BBC)

From the article:

Mr de Sanctis said the fact that SanDisk players were able to play MP3 files meant the company was legally required to purchase a licence.

"It is just not possible to do it any other way," he said.
So, in other words, they've patented the format itself, not just the decoding or encoding. Frightening stuff, really...

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SanDisk faces MP3 licence dispute (BBC)

Posted Sep 6, 2006 7:19 UTC (Wed) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link]

Or in other words, isn't the patent invalid? If there's no other way to do it, then it's a discovery not an invention, and therefore unpatentable. Or it's a monopoly, and anti-trust trumps patent.

Or, and what most people here don't seem to have noticed, IT'S IN GERMANY! In other words, this is a software patent, not permitted under the European Patent Treaty, and totally unenforceable! This could be a great chance to have software patents declared unambiguously illegal (only problem, it's in Germany, and isn't it a German institution that holds the patent?)

Cheers,
Wol