Huh? What are you talking about? [LWN.net]

Huh? What are you talking about?

Posted Jul 7, 2009 5:01 UTC (Tue) by wblew (subscriber, #39088)
In reply to: Huh? What are you talking about? by khim
Parent article: Ogg codecs dropped from HTML5

Digital video technology has been developed and sold in Europe where software patents are (mostly?) not applicable.

The argument fails to hold water.

Are you sure?

Posted Jul 7, 2009 5:17 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

1. How many codecs developed in Europe without help from US companies do you know? How successfull they are?

2. MPEG-LA does have patens in other countries besides US. The full list is not easy to find (why the hell do we have "open standards" which unclude closed list of patents), but here are list of MPGE-audio-related from a single ~~patent troll~~ firm. I presume video patents include equally impressive list.

Learn the facts before writing the answers. It's not clear what role patents played in audio/video codecs development, but to claim that the fact that some codecs can be used in some small parts of the world without fear changes the situation totally is to fool yourself.