[wellylug] Multimedia Nightmares

[Daniel Pittman]

Tim McKenzie <tjm1983 at gmail.com> writes:
> On Sat, 12 Sep 2009 13:51:57 Daniel Pittman wrote:
>
>> Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, Sony, and a number of the other big CE companies
>> are much more interesting that Microsoft if you want to look into patents
>> surrounding A/V codecs.
>
> Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft appears to own three current patents in 
> New Zealand:
> Method of purifying waste water from dairies
> Vapour barrier for use in the heat insulation of buildings
> Method for coating fibers with glue

I confess: you caught me naming the usual suspects without checking NZ
specifics at all, which is probably wicked of me.  F-G are, IIRC, the
licensing arm that held the various MPEG patents that apply to MPEG1, Layer3,
and some MPEG4 components.

> Sony owns 68, some of which look much more likely to cover A/V codecs.  I
> don't know if any of them have been tested in court.  I suspect that, like
> other software patents I've heard about, they're incredibly vague.  But no
> matter how clear they are, the question of their exact extent is (even in
> theory) logically undecidable (given any particular system of logic with
> decidable axioms).  That's what you get when you allow patents on
> mathematical algorithms.

Yeah, software patents.  *spit*  Nasty things.
        Daniel
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