Re: [ITPOLITIK] Både patent og copyright for samme produkt ?

[Peter Maersk-Moller <sslug@sslug>]

Der var lige et afsnit, der havde sneget sig ud. Genindsat i næstnederste
afsnit.

--PMM
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 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.
 
But why not make streaming software manufacture liable for all this? If
you read the licensing agreement for the software for the major streaming
platforms available today, then you may notice that the companies producing
and selling the software are exempting them selves from any liability you as
a user of their software may assume including but not alone from patent
infringement incurred by using the software. Whether or not such an exemption is
legal valid, still remain to be seen.

> 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.