[mythtv-users] Is Mplayer going away? Anyone seen their WWW site recently?

[Stephen Boddy]

On Monday 14 March 2005 17:18, Stephen Williams wrote:
> No, they're not having legal issues. There just making some misguided
> protest about a subject they clearly don't understand. The software
> patents directive is a non-issue blown out of all proportion.
>
> My partner is a eurpoean patent attorney so knows what's really going
> on here, i've also spoken to people in her firm about this. This
> directive does nothing more than to set into law how patenting of
> software is _currently_ handled. The laws which have been applied up
> till this point were not designed with software in mind, this is what
> is being but right.

No offence, but DUH!!! Of course a patent attorney is going to say that this 
law is all hunky-dory, it's his future bread and butter!!! Pure software 
patents are not currently legally enforcable in a number of European 
countries. The ambiguous wording of the CIID opens the back door for pure 
software patents, and there is a whole saga going on with the European 
Parliament at loggerheads with the European Commission over amendments and 
procedure. I suggest you head over to www.groklaw.net for a thorough and 
informative view of what's going on. It may (debatably) be biased the other 
way, but at least you'd have both sides of the argument. Really! Would you 
ask a fox to guard the chicken coop?

However, you are right that the current patent law was not designed with 
software in mind. You're incorrect if you think that this law will put 
anything right.

> Quite simply, the directive is deisgned to maintain the current status
> quo with regards to patenting of soatware, the whole point behind it
> is that the law is clarrified whilst having _no_ material impact.

Wrong! Tell "_no_ material impact" to all the small and medium business (the 
ones that usually drive innovation) that will be driven out of business by 
this law.

Innovation through litigation?
-- 
Steve Boddy