Swift and predictable reactions to WebM

Posted May 26, 2010 5:32 UTC (Wed) by brouhaha (subscriber, #1698)
In reply to: Swift and predictable reactions to WebM by drag
Parent article: Swift and predictable reactions to WebM

It isn't sufficient to avoid one claim of each patent. You have to avoid ALL the claims of each patent.

There is also a very good reason for some parties NOT to study the MPEG-LA patents. If you have seen someone else's patents, and are later found to be infringing them, it establishes "knowing infringement", for which the penalty can be much higher.

Swift and predictable reactions to WebM

Posted May 26, 2010 9:16 UTC (Wed) by bboissin (subscriber, #29506) [Link] (2 responses)

> It isn't sufficient to avoid one claim of each patent. You have to avoid ALL the claims of each patent.

Not if you dismiss the independant claim.

> There is also a very good reason for some parties NOT to study the MPEG-LA patents. If you have seen someone else's patents, and are later found to be infringing them, it establishes "knowing infringement", for which the penalty can be much higher.

As pointed out by Tridge, this isn't really true for most open source software, as the "simple" penalty already effectively kills the project.
http://news.swpat.org/2010/03/transcript-tridgell-patents...

Swift and predictable reactions to WebM

Posted May 31, 2010 17:30 UTC (Mon) by mlankhorst (subscriber, #52260) [Link] (1 responses)

For open source perhaps, but triple damage on google just means the patent trolls can buy an even bigger villa at some tropical island..

Swift and predictable reactions to WebM

Posted May 31, 2010 17:41 UTC (Mon) by bboissin (subscriber, #29506) [Link]

But it's very likely that Google engineers (and others from big companies) do read patents, and use their legal dpt to check for potential infrigement. The problem is different than the usual small OSS project.