Re: XMMS and the new MP3 patent terms
Oleg wrote:
On Wednesday 28 August 2002 03:03 pm, Bijan Soleymani
wrote:
>>It might
>>even be a good idea
>>in general to set up a fund to buy patents and
>>refuse
>>to license them [...]
>Isn't there a law against this? (Patent Office and
>Patent Law were originally
>created to protect progress and innovation, not to
>hinder it)
As to your first point. If it is illegal then we
needn't refuse outright. If Thomson had set the fee
at $10 per copy with no flat $50 000 fee, not even
winamp or windows media player could afford to pay
that much per copy. We would then only have to offer
the patent at no charge to free software projects and
at a reasonable/unreasonable price to proprietary
software vendors.
And for your second point "created to protect progress
and innovation" that may well be why the law was
created (I don't know enough patent history to say
for sure). That has nothing to do with the law as it
exists now, either refusing to license is allowed or
it isn't, the why is only important for those working
on modifying the current laws.
>From a common sense point of view one should be free
to refuse to license. As there is no real difference
between that and chargin a ludicrous fee (say 1000
billion $). Who should determine what is reasonable?
The patent bureaus of various countries? If that is so
we should look at attacking software patent holders
there, by arguing that their fees are too high and
stiffle software freedoms.
Bijan
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