[vorbis] About patenting

[Tom Bishop]

Patents can be interesting...

Patents, are:
    - local to each specific country, each of 
        which has "different" rules concerning almost
        every aspect of the process, and even concepts.
    - are much less valuable, even if issued, unless they
        are innately "defensible", AND you have a legal team
        that you can pay to defend them.
    - offer little protection / option to Vorbis, as long as they
        document their work, though it would help in some 
        cases...

As long as you can prove "prior art", you can dismiss holders
of patents on your technology.. The patent process is geared
to "acceptance".. not "rejection".. since with "acceptance" 
the applicant is happy and the PO makes more money...

But you always need a legal team.. and IP lawyers are expensive.

Patents are best used to stop or restict someone from
replicating your process or invention, but Vorbis is mostly
interested (as I understand it) in giving it away.. so they don't
have that much interest in restricting anyone else from doing
this or that..

Vorbis (I think?) mostly wants to insure that noone else can restrict
them from producing their "License Free-er" codec.

If you had a patent, and you have prior art, then frivoulous
cases have less of a chance of even being heard, and you
will save lawyer fees, but really good patents can cost $1,000's
and many times $10's of $1000's of dollars... and that is just
one country..

If you have a patent, you can do a few things with it..
You can:
    - Not do much.. just hold it in case someone sues you.
    - Release it to the public domain
        (Like RSA did several months before DES patents expired)
    - Require "LARGE" patent users to donate modest license fees to charity

Regards,
Tom

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