[vorbis] Fraunhoffer claims patents on other formats

[Roland Nagtegaal]

> The question here is not whether parts of Vorbis cannot be patented,
> being prior art, but whether parts can. If any part can, then you are (IMHO)
> taking a big risk in not doing so. If someone else tries to grab it, remember,
> you don't get to decide what prior art is examined,
> nor will you be asked to comment. It's all done in secret - at least for now.
> All you can do, if it passes the PTO, is sue.

Anything that has been published in the open, in an academic journal as 
described above, would count as prior art, if I understand correctly.
This means that one court invalidate patents in court (although it
would take time), if parts of it had already been published prior, right?
The amount of articles on all kinds of advanced algorithms is ofcourse
enormous, and I think one could attack most bogus patents, including
those of Fraunhofer, from journals alone.
I mean: Fourier transform stuff was big in the 60's and 70's, and Gauss
already had a method of doing DFT in 1805.
So, I would think that finding a truly new algorithm is extremely
difficult, everything depends on some prior art.

> Open Source does NOT equal patent free. If you want to license your patent to all,
> I see no reason why you cannot have a binding license. That's the "L" in GPL, after
> all.

If you just publish carefully all your ideas in a journal, and your reference
implementation as LGPL, would that not be even better?
This way prior art could be proven to exist in any country, irrespective
of their patent-laws, and your software-implementation is then covered
by LGPL in all countries where LGPL is valid.

Roland
> 
> 
>                                  Regards
>                                  Marshall Eubanks
> 
> >
> >
> > On Sun, Oct 01, 2000 at 10:14:15PM -0700, Rich Burroughs wrote:
> > > On Mon, 2 Oct 2000, Marshall Eubanks wrote:
> > >
> > > > This does not sound like the way to secure the open source movement.
> > >
> > > I disagree completely. It's been my understanding that, beyond the
> > > improvements in technology, the main point of Vorbis is to be patent-free
> > > and open source so we don't have to deal with the kind of licenses that
> > > Fraunhofer is trying to push on people. What if iCast were to patent
> > > Vorbis, and then some bean counter decided that they really should be
> > > making money off this project that they are funding the development
> > > of? What would stop us from ending up as much at their mercy as we now are
> > > to Fraunhofer?
> > >
> > > No thanks. I applaud the folks who started the project for making it open
> > > and patent free, and I hope it stays that way.
> > >
> > >
> > > Rich
> > >
> > >
> > >
> 
> 
> 
> --
> 
> 
> 
> T.M. Eubanks
> Multicast Technologies, Inc
> 10301 Democracy Lane, Suite 410
> Fairfax, Virginia 22030
> Phone : 703-293-9624
> Fax     : 703-293-9609
> e-mail : tme at on-the-i.com     tme at multicasttech.com
> 
> http://www.on-the-i.com http://www.buzzwaves.com
> 
> 
> 
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