Re: MPlayer

[Wouter Verhelst <wouter@grep.be>]

On Thu, Jul 22, 2004 at 02:23:40PM +1000, Matthew Palmer wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 22, 2004 at 01:49:57AM +0100, Colin Watson wrote:
> > It expires in October anyway.
> 
> Don't US patents last 20 years now?  Or does that only apply to patents
> filed / approved / whatever after the date of the change?

Indeed. However, this patent was owned by a company which has recently
been acquired by another one. That new company is filing suits, the
other wasn't.

A company being acquired by another (luckily) doesn't renew patent
terms. This patent expires in October.

> > Unless Debian is actually served with a cease-and-desist and the claim
> > looks legitimate, no bug-filing should happen.
> 
> I'm happy to cede to your authority.  But this is a different way of
> handling a patent threat than was applied for the LZW patent.  Or did Debian
> receive such an order in the LZW case?

No, but the term in which LZW patents could be filed was much longer.

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