Comment by pavlov
9 years ago
Fortunately patents are fairly short-lived (at least compared to copyright). A lot of the worst software patents were granted in the '90s and early 2000s and are reaching their 20-year expiration date.
9 years ago
Fortunately patents are fairly short-lived (at least compared to copyright). A lot of the worst software patents were granted in the '90s and early 2000s and are reaching their 20-year expiration date.
Have a look at recent patents for Facebook. http://stks.freshpatents.com/Facebook-Inc-nm1.php
A patent for 'user status update suggestions' for example. Yuck.
20 years is still an eternity for tech that improves every day.
Does this actually help that much, though? I imagine many of the important patentable improvements end up being obsolete by the time the patents expire.
The MPEG-2 patents are all expired, and it's still widely used (all terrestrial and most cable TV). It higher bitrates MPEG-2 is still very reasonable.
Sure, but I expect that's more because no one wants to tell everyone their TVs that they were forced to buy in the mid-2000s are obsolete and they must buy a new MPEG-4 (or whatever) capable TV in order to keep watching broadcast television. (Of course, cable networks can do whatever they want; they can just build new decoder boxes if it's worth the expense to them).
Terrestrial broadcast standards have to move slowly. Internet-based streaming and storage can move much faster, and it's supremely beneficial to be able to do so. MPEG-2's now-expired patent portfolio isn't too useful for that, and hasn't been for quite a while now.