HTML5 video element codec debate reignited

Posted Feb 4, 2010 10:11 UTC (Thu) by Jonno (subscriber, #49613)
In reply to: HTML5 video element codec debate reignited by niner
Parent article: HTML5 video element codec debate reignited

The problem is that those "few countries" are 149 out of the 203 sovereign
states in the world, at least in theory. In many of them, including my
home country Sweden and most of the rest of the EU, software patents are
valid and are regularly granted, but you can't enforce them in court,
making them mostly useless. However, there are talks of making them
enforceable in all of EU in the near future, and while such plans has been
beaten back before, there are no guarantees that will happen this time, or
the next time, making betting on the status quo quite risky...

HTML5 video element codec debate reignited

Posted Feb 4, 2010 11:03 UTC (Thu) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link] (1 responses)

Where did you get that 149 countries figure from? That would include the
EU, which is still wrong. Yes, software patents are granted in the EU, but
that does not mean that this is legal, valid or enforceable. It is not.

And yes I'm willing to bet my money and my existence on this, because
otherwise, as the FFII web shop example so eloquently demonstrates, I
would be violating valid patents every day while acting in my profession
as a programmer.

Just because the EPO and certain lobbying groups want it so, does not make
it real. They just very much like to paint a picture where it is so. But
the European parliament already beat back software patents once, and it's
even stronger now. And even in the U.S. software patents have been
generally accepted only for about twenty years. This is not set in stone.
Such things can and do change. Again lobbying groups only want us to
believe that things will always stay the same. And any acting like it were
so and nothing could be done about it simply helps them.

And that's why I'm strongly opposed to give in and act like software
patents were an indisputable reality in the whole world. This has to be
fought hard and the more people are behind this movement the better. We
have seen this in Europe where a mass of small companies raising their
voices made the difference. Now if we divide the world in two where people
in software patent accepting countries get the worse technology while the
rest can enjoy progress, this can only help to bring them on our side.

This does not work by declaring the cause lost.

HTML5 video element codec debate reignited

Posted Feb 4, 2010 12:37 UTC (Thu) by gmaxwell (guest, #30048) [Link]

Yes, the EU. A typical codec patent doesn't look like a typical "software patent", they speak of machines performing concrete transformations to signals. ::shrugs:: I'm not sure how the "software patent" boundary looks in Europe, but codec patents are surely created there, granted there, and enforced there.

Even if it were somehow a US only thing it's hard to do business on any scale without bumping into the US or at least someone who wants to appease US interests. It truly is a world-wide issue.