Re: Software-Patents

On Fri, 9 Jan 2004, Enrico Weigelt wrote:

>Do we want to take care of them or simply ignore this probem ?

I don't _want_ to take care of it, but maybe that's necessary. Hopefully
someone else will do it ;)

>If we would, we have to design around them (this also would mean
>not any thought of compatibility w/ DirectShow, etc). It will be a very

I think that any compatibility should be achieved with some extra layer so
that it wouldn't affect the actual API.

>hard and not 100% solvable job

True, but..

>since we cant really know whats patented,

In principle we can: just look into the patent databases. At least U.S.
patents are available in the web, I don't know about others.

>until an patent owner files a lawsuit against us.

A lawsuit doesn't indicate that a patent is valid, it's the judge.
The problem is that nobody wants to go that far or even to the lawsuit
stage.

My suggestion for somebody worried about patents (and others): start
searching and collecting patent numbers that may be problematic. Then when
somebody is actually coding a similar thing, he can read the patent (if
worried).