Patent hassles for OpenMoko

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.