AFAIK There is discussion about EU-Software patents but it is not yet decided. IIRC in May the EU disposed a survey mainly about open source and patents in small to medium large companies. Well there are some tricky ways to patent your Software anyway but not in EU level. So every land in europe has almost their own laws about patents and the interpretation of every patent varies from land to land. So bringing the issue to the court may help everyone except the German till the EU decides to make an act about software patents (if they haven't already). The best way will be to kiss Frauenhofer's MP3 the ass goodbye. Patents are not backwards compatible I guess. So Software that has been created before the patent is not affected. But you can bet that Frauenhofer will issue a significant modification in MP3 so that you're forced to use a new en-/decoder for the new 'features'. -- $ Hello World! $ I am [Ff]rank ;) 1024D/EC4CE5CC 2002-05-14 Frank Brodbeck <oakenshield@gmx.net> fingerprint = 193D 62EC 03A5 1066 A951 4DA3 947A D578 EC4C E5CC
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