On Thu, 2004-05-13 at 12:07, Andrew Kohlsmith wrote:As someone who has working in speech coding I'd say this is complete nonsense. The mass of patents on speech coding was a land grab, and nothing more. Much of the really clever stuff in speech coding is unencumbered, and always was. In general it is a mass of dumb stuff that you unfortunately need to use that has been patented. Those patents are not the result of deep research. They are just road blocks stuck in people's way.
17 years for software patents is FAR too long, IMO, but that's an entirely different story. IMO software patents shoudln't be for more than ~24 months since the industry moves so blazingly fast.
I'm of mixed feelings here. I don't like software patents at all, but
without them, some of the voice compression that is out there would
possibly not have been developed. What would have been the incentive for
the telecoms to allow the public in on some of the voice compressions
with out getting paid for the work. So while I think it is important, I
also can't seem to draw a reasonable line. 24 months in most software
isn't enough time from day 0 to make any reward for the work, at least
not monetarily. What software project out there do you know had a major
roll out sufficiently under 24 months from beginning of programming to
have paid the programming staff off after say 1 year past the initial 24
months?
There was so much to gain the early digital cellular days by being at the leading edge, that any of the major wireless companies would have been just as dedicated to succeeding without patents. If you look at the people claiming a piece of the IP pie for, say, half rate GSM you will see almost every well known wireless company, and a few more. All the real work for that codec was done by Motorola, who developed it, and owes almost nothing to all those hangers on. It does own a lot to basic CELP work done at AT&T in the early 80's, but they never patented that.
Regards, Steve
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