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

[Stephen Williams]

> Sorry, but as a patent attorney I assume she gets a salary? Makes a profit for
> the company she works for? She therefore has a vested interest, and that
> would make her biased, as her livelyhood depends on the need for patent
> attorneys. 

Contrary to popular belief and propaganda, patent attorneys are people
just like you and me, many of them therefore have a conscience and a
degree of professional integrity. It may surprise you to learn that
most of them are interested in encouraging innovation, as indeed is
the European Patent Office (who, if you want to did deeper, you will
discover they often find in favour of 'the little guy' as a matter of
principle and fairness over and above the strict interpretation of the
law). Neither the EPO nor european patent attorneys want a system like
that being run in America, fact.

> Great, so we define the specificity of a law after it is created in the all
> out land grab that ensues.

Patent law is based on case precedent, welcome to reality.

> Your last sentence is nonsensical. One of the EPO's public statements is that
> this is intended to harmonise European patent law.

Clearly you misread it then, as I said, the intention is to stop
certain countries in the EU from using loopholes to get software
patents (which the EPO does not want). Stopping these countries would
be described as harmonisation to me.

> Then why won't they explicitly exclude pure software patents in unequivocal
> terms? The language is convoluted, but the upshot is that as long as software
> has a "technical effect" it can be patented. Like to explain "technical
> effect" for me. People are still trying to get clarification on this.

As I said, european patent law is based on precedent. The limits of
'Technical effect' have been determined through case history, this is
why you need to talk somebody who's well informed in that area, i.e. a
patent attorney.

> MythWeb and MythBrowser: BT have a USP on the hyperlink.

Well, no. They tried to play that card but failed.

> MythMusic & MythStream: Franhoefer et al have patents on MP3 encoding
> decoding.

Not in the EU they don't. We don't have software patents remember.
They have copyright on their own software implementation, nothing
more.

> MythPhone: Voice compression codecs.
> MythTV: The ability to pause and buffer TV, then catch up.
> MythNews: I think RSS is based on RDF which is covered by an EP.
> Samba file shares: Good ol' MS have patents on CIFS.
> WishTV: Might be covered if the automated suggestions from other viewers gets
> developed.

Ditto, ditto, ditto. This might be different in America, but their
patent system is fundamentally different.

> Feel free to try and convince me that big business is the one to structure the
> legal framework we all have to live with, but I'm a tough sell.

I'm not trying to do that, and that's not the way it works in the EPO.
Who will determine the rulings are the EPO judges who have a very good
track record for upholding common-sense, fairness and protection of
'the little guy'.

I'm not trying to say this situation is perfect, it's clearly not. Do
try to understand that software patents are starting to be forced
through in the EU right now due to inconsistencies in laws that were
never intended to cover this subject! The EPO (like you) wants to stop
that from happening, like it or not this is the basis for the CIID.