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More about the Chrome HTML Video Codec Change (The Chromium Blog)More about the Chrome HTML Video Codec Change (The Chromium Blog)Posted Jan 16, 2011 17:51 UTC (Sun) by Seegras (subscriber, #20463)In reply to: More about the Chrome HTML Video Codec Change (The Chromium Blog) by roc Parent article: More about the Chrome HTML Video Codec Change (The Chromium Blog)
> You can't ship Fluendo's or ffmpeg's H.264 codecs in a Linux
> distribution in the USA or Europe without risking a patent lawsuit.
Actually, software patents are still illegal in Europe. Just because the European Patent Agency is violating the law wholesale does not mean software patents are enforceable.
If the US legalizes extortion in the field of software, so be it; but I'm going to fight against the the same happening in Europe. And in the meantime, I refuse to acknowledge that something as abhorrent as the doings of the EPA even exists.
But of course, in regards of international standards, it's clear you have to go the route of the least common denominator, and if one country decides to allow monopoly rights on a technology, and the designers of that technology encumber it with those monopoly-rights, that pretty well means that this technology is not going to be a standard -- unless that country a) either fixes the law or b) the body decides to get rid of monopoly-rights on said technology. (Well there is c) of course, that what is happening right now: The USA bullies all other countries into adapting its laws).
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More about the Chrome HTML Video Codec Change (The Chromium Blog) Posted Jan 16, 2011 20:42 UTC (Sun) by roc (subscriber, #30627) [Link]
You may not believe software patents are enforceable in Europe, but lots of European companies clearly do since they license H.264 patents and other software patents in Europe.
More about the Chrome HTML Video Codec Change (The Chromium Blog) Posted Jan 17, 2011 16:32 UTC (Mon) by Los__D (guest, #15263) [Link]
No, that just means that they believe that the risk of them being enforceable is greater than the savings of not licensing.
More about the Chrome HTML Video Codec Change (The Chromium Blog) Posted Jan 18, 2011 0:33 UTC (Tue) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link]
Actually, it's probably a case of "if we have to licence them for the USA, we might as well licence them for the world".
They are NOT enforceable in Europe. One simply has to quote the European Patent Treaty to the Judge and it's "end of court case". Or at least, it is if you can persuade the Judge that your stuff falls into the EXplicitly excluded category, which is all software patents.
Problem is, a bit like in the US, the lawyers like to argue and if they can persuade the Judge that "All Software Patents" is a bit vague and woolly, they might get a result ...
Cheers,
More about the Chrome HTML Video Codec Change (The Chromium Blog) Posted Jan 17, 2011 11:57 UTC (Mon) by rqosa (subscriber, #24136) [Link] > Actually, software patents are still illegal in Europe. The problem is, it's possible to patent "a machine that does something", and anyone shipping a hardware device that does something must have a patent license, even if they're using a software implementation of something. (See here, for example.) So codec patents are still a problem for mobile phones and tablet computers.
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