Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] Audio engine stuff
From: Juhana Sadeharju (kouhia_AT_nic.funet.fi)
Date: to helmi 17 2000 - 13:17:36 EST
>From: Paul Barton-Davis <pbd_AT_Op.Net>
>
>BTW, Juhana, I talked with my attorney friend last night, and here in
>the US at least, your plan to work around a patent by providing a
>script language that made it easy to implement the technology once
>someone reads the patent would constitute contributory
>infringement. This would apply, he said, even if you wrote the script
>language *before* the patent was awarded. The language itself wouldn't
>infringe, but if someone used it to infringe the patent, you'd be
>implicated.
Will Microsoft be sued if I use Visual Basic for such infringements?
Or Guile persons if I use Guile in GIMP for something which is patented?
Or C compiler people?
A script language for audio dsp will be useful and I think your
friend has understood something wrong.
Naturally somebody might wish that every programming/scripting language
would be so difficult to use than nobody can think of writing anything
which infringes patents, or anything...
>groups were opposed to them! Their argument was that the vast majority
>of their membership was composed of small-to-medium sized companies,
>and that software patent protection would simply encourage the
>concentration of power in the industry in the hands of few large
>corporations, and also that it would stifle innovation.
That is the situation now. It is easy to make inventions because no
time is wasted for software development. For example, I "invented"
a lot of audio stuff nearly ten years ago but because I had no
programming skills, I simply had to wait.. up to day and beyond.
In this sense Audiotechque project's attitude against developmental
discussions were very wrong --- four programmers even left the mailing
list because of the noise: "we have to write code!" was the message.
This is happening in patent field. Those who write code and eventually
later figure out "invents" finds out that those ideas already have
patents because it is faster to come up with invents than code.
So, from this day, we should not underestimate any discussions.
Juhana
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