Både patent og copyright for samme produkt ?

[Peter Maersk-Moller <sslug@sslug>]

Hej.

Jeg er ved at skrive skrive om problemerne ved at levere streaming services
på Internettet og er nået frem til nedenstående omkring patenter.

Nu er det jo ikke sådan at denne mailing-liste tilbyder en redaktionsservice,
men hvis der skulle være en enkelt eller to, der mener jeg har fået tingene
galt i halsen, så vil jeg være glad for at få det at vide.

Skulle der senere være nogen, der måtte ønske en kopi af hele rapporten,
kan dette sikkert også lade sig gøre.

Med venlig hilsen Peter Mærsk-Møller

PS, se venligst bort fra sproget, da dette kun er første "raw cut" og derfor
trænger til en gennemretning.

PS2 Kunne man ikke finde et softwarepatent givet i DK som man kunne misbruge
ved at implementere i en service i SSLUG/DKUUG. Da så man frygter sagsanlæg
fra patentejeren, kunne man derefter føle sig nødsaget til at nedlægge denne
service igen og anlægge sag mod PTO for at have givet patentet mod lovgivningen
og derved ulovligt have skabt problemer for SSLUG/DKUUG ? Eller er PTO sat over
lovgivningen så man ikke kan gøre dem ansvarlige for deres handlinger ?

Det kræver selvfølgelig en sponsorering, men det kan måske løses.

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Patents:

Usually streaming techniques and codecs are heavily covered or claimed to be
covered by a long list of patents. Though software patents in principle does
not apply in Europe, the Federation for a Free Informational Infrastructure
[FFII] estimates that the European Patent Office [EPO] for the last few years
has been granting between 20.000 and 30.000 software patents believed to be
against the letter and spirit of the written law. To this long list one should
add software patents granted by national patent offices (NPOs) also believed to
be against the letter and spirit of the relevant national written law. It appears
that Europe has been letting the fox guard the hen house believing that telling
the fox not to eat the poultry would be sufficient.

If you are streaming or providing streaming services based within the US, chances
are that most patents (software or not) apply (if valid). On the other hand many US
granted patents has shown not to hold up in court, but telling beforehand which will
hold and which will not is virtually impossible. Whether or not software patents
granted in Europe are valid in Europe still remain to be seen.

Does this mean anything to you streaming content or offering streaming services? The
answer can at best be a maybe. Due to this mess EPO and the NPOs has placed us in,
there is no way to be sure until expensive trial cases has established sufficient
precedence, even in countries where civil law is the norm.

But what if you buy all your software commercially and legally? Have you then not
paid all needed royalties for patents used in your software to your software
reseller or manufacturer? The answer is at best a probably not. For streaming
software covered by patents, royalties usually has to be paid both by companies
selling the software and by companies using the software [MPEGLA], [M4IF].[MP3LIC].
For many of these patents applies that you have to pay both a one-time fee and a
mileage fee.

This is something completely new and unprecedented in the industrialized world.
What the patent administrators does is to combine the patent fee collection scheme
traditionally found with manufactured goods (cars, clothes, electronic products etc)
and added the royalty collection scheme traditionally found with copyrighted products
such as books, songs, movies etc.

So if you pay royalties for patents as well as paying for the software, are you then
ok? The answer is again maybe or probably not. The reason is that you as a user of
closed source (proprietary) software, you do not have a possible way to check which
patents are likely to cover the actual code. To be fair, as a user of Open Source,
you do not have a practical way of checking this either.

If you feel this is an unacceptable risk, then either do not stream or ask you
elected representative for your national parliament to explain why we are in such
a mess and how he/she intends to get us out of it. A third option could be an army
of skilled but usually expensive lawyers.