Re: [xine-devel] Re: Patents and source code (was: Put plugins in a plugins/ directory)

[Attila K. <at...@ki...>]

Hey people,

On Wed, 5 Jan 2005 13:38:39 +0100
Michael Roitzsch <mr...@us...> wrote:

> > > In addition to that, most of us are fortunately not bound by software
> > > patents (yet). And I agree that a separate distribution of plugins would
> > > clearly not make our project "more legal" (if illegal at all).

I would even go further:
Don't care about the patents. Use them as much as you like. You just have
to make sure that the servers providing binaries have to be in countries
where software patents are not applicable.
And as i already said on ffmpeg-devel a few days ago, if the US wants
to shut itself out of the OSS business, then let it do. But Europe
and all the other countries who still dont have software patnets should
keep on moving forward.

Beside, using "patented" algorithms now has an interesting implication:
Currently none of the patents are valid in Europe, actualy all patent
applications are illegal. If they change the law and software patents
get reality, what happends to our OSS ? One possibility is, that it
becomes illegal to use. The other is, that it accounts as "prior art"
or as customary law (we used these programs before the patents were
legal) and thus their usage cannot be prohibited.
Though, this is totaly hypotetical, i haven't read patent law at all
and i don't know how it applies to newly created patentability, it makes
the future very interesting. We even might end up with the situation
that they might patent their algorithms, but cannot enforce it on
OSS because it was there before.

> > correct. just for reference, Brazilian patent law explicitly exclude
> > algorithms from being patentable.  at first i thought this clause
> > would be incompatible with WTO (TRIPS) international agreement on
> > patents (since it forbid further exclusions) but our law define that
> > algorithms, programing and mathematical methods cannot be considered
> > inventions and therefore are not patentable. (TRIPS does not define
> > what can be considered an invention, so i guess this must the same
> > situation as current European laws?)

Yes, it still is and we have to fight to keep it that way.


					Attila Kinali