Re: MP3 decoder packaged with XMMS
On 7/19/05, Michael K. Edwards <m.k.edwards@gmail.com> wrote:
> OK -- how about this: Fraunhofer, AFAICT, has not attempted to patent
> any well-known technique of converting data from a time series to a
> frequency spectrum, nor the idea of applying such a technique to music
> compression, nor would they or anyone alse have a prayer of litigating
> such a claim successfully in court. (IANAL, TINLA.)
Good enough.
More generally, I don't think that principles of mathematical equivalence
should be relevant in determining what is or is not patentable.
This gets back to the topic of how issues of fact have been handled
(or not) in existing court cases.
> > If we're talking about "avoiding distribution of software to avoid potential
> > but as yet non-existent challenges", we're going to need to be fairly
> > broad in our consideration of what would be a potential threat.
>
> Not so broad as to wildly misrepresent how the system works or to
> woefully exaggerate what is "covered" in an unnamed patent. I'm not
> saying you are knowingly doing these things, just that you risk doing
> so if you repeat things like "the use of time -> frequency domain
> mapping is ... ostensibly covered by the presumptively valid patents".
If you follow this thread back, I was not talking court decisions at all.
I was discussing a comment made by some programmer(s) who had
apparently read the patents in question.
--
Raul
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