[whatwg] Codecs (was Re: Apple Proposal for Timed Media Elements)

[Christian F.K. Schaller]

It is an Urban Legend that there are no software patents in the EU. True
enough there is no 'EU' software patents, but a lot of member states do
have them. I suggest going the MPEG LA's webpage and looking at the
patent lists they have there for MPEG4. You will notice that a lot of
the patents are from EU countries.

Christian


On Fri, 2007-03-23 at 08:35 +0000, Gareth Hay wrote:
> Not in the EU, no such thing as a software patent.
> 
> On 23 Mar 2007, at 04:55, Ian Hickson wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, 23 Mar 2007, Robert Sayre wrote:
> >>
> >> MPEG-4 is proprietary, because it is covered by patents.
> >
> > I hate to be the one to break this to you, but CSS is covered by  
> > patents,
> > HTML is covered by patents, the DOM is covered by patents,  
> > JavaScript is
> > covered by patents, and so forth. Proprietary technologies are  
> > those that
> > are under the control of a single vendor. MPEG-4 is not proprietary.
> >
> > It's not available under royalty free licensing. But it is not  
> > under the
> > control of a single vendor. That is the important difference, not  
> > whether
> > the technology is patented or not.
> >
> > -- 
> > Ian Hickson               U+1047E                ) 
> > \._.,--....,'``.    fL
> > http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _ 
> > \  ;`._ ,.
> > Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'-- 
> > (,_..'`-.;.'
-- 
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