patents

[Eric Dunbar]

On 30/03/06, Brian Puccio <brian at brianpuccio.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 2006-03-29 at 14:52 -0500, Eric Dunbar wrote:
> > > MP3 will never be Free in the Debian/FSF/GNU/etc sense of the word.
> >
> > MP3 will be 'free' once the relevant patents expire!
>
> I have a feeling many tech companies will start to look to extend the
> times of their patents, much in the way Disney (and the rest of the huge
> media conglomerate) have been successful at lobbying for copyright
> extension.

Fortunately I don't think they have too much power to change the
system. There haven't been major shifts in patent limits and laws like
there have in copyright (copytheft!!!). In pharmaceuticals patents are
'extended' by patenting a drug for a different treament or making
minor modifications to the way the drug is made. However, that said,
the original patents do expire and the invention enters the 'public
domain'.

> Plus, there is the fact that a lot of patents don't expire everywhere at
> the same time. I remember the burn all gif's website had a pretty
> complete list of when the patents expired where.

True, and, given that there are a number of patents covering various
aspects of MP3 it will be a long time before MP3 really is "set free",
world-wide.

> (Thank you for pointing this out though :))
NP :-)