Patent hassles for OpenMoko

Posted Nov 17, 2008 11:26 UTC (Mon) by ms (subscriber, #41272)
In reply to: Patent hassles for OpenMoko by MathFox
Parent article: Patent hassles for OpenMoko

Ahh, I'm really not trying to apportion blame here. I was thinking more that if Obama forces through reform of software patents, it would be difficult for the EUP/EC to not adopt similar reforms, especially in these times of economic difficulties - the argument that patents stifle development and that non-patent ridden countries are more attractive to software development investment will, I would hope, be compelling enough.

Patent hassles for OpenMoko

Posted Nov 17, 2008 12:04 UTC (Mon) by MathFox (guest, #6104) [Link] (1 responses)

Agreed. Personally I feel that stopping software patents in Europe helped to spark the recent reforms in the US. Unfortunately, the MP3 patents are pretty old and IMO of better quality (in the disclosure) and more specificity than the average software patent.

Patent hassles for OpenMoko

Posted Nov 17, 2008 12:42 UTC (Mon) by kirkengaard (guest, #15022) [Link]

Yes. If there is such a thing as a "good" software patent, i.e. one that is properly documented, strictly defined, and describes precisely what it covers in the patent material, Fraunhofer may well be in the running for that qualification. Good patent by patent standards, not by software standards. At least part of the problem here is that it was far more hardware-specific a problem when the team that developed what became layer 3 did their work. We're talking a patent on a design encoded into DSP chips, plus the output format. At that time, it was easier to see as a patentable issue, and not as math. My guess is, nobody figured on the output format becoming the money maker.