[Asterisk-Dev] Re: writing a GPL G.729?

[Tom Ivar Helbekkmo]

Eric Wieling aka ManxPower <eric at fnords.org> writes:

> I have NEVER seen ANY statement by a patent lawyer that the G729
> patents are not valid in some parts of the world.  All I've seen is
> non-lawyers saying that.

Have I completely misunderstood patents?  I thought they were national
-- i.e., if I patent something here, in Norway, at the Norwegian
Patent Office, I'll have a Norwegian patent, and nobody else can sell
products incorporating my idea in Norway without paying me a licence
fee.  My Norwegian patent will, however, have no clout whatsoever in
the USA.  In fact, I've been told by people who were supposed to know
these things, that one has to make a trade-off between the cost of
patenting an invention in N countries, and the gains one expects from
those patents.  Thus, one applies for patents in those countries were
one expects large sales volumes to be possible.

Frankly, I tend to suspect that there are a lot of little countries
where G.729 is *not* patented, because they don't have patent offices.

I would expect, however, that G.729 is protected by some sort of
patent or other agreement covering the entire EU, and thus valid in
Norway as well.  (No, we're not a member: we want self-determination,
which is why we have agreed to follow all EU rules and regulations,
without the membership privilege of taking part in writing them.)

-tih
-- 
Tom Ivar Helbekkmo, Senior System Administrator, EUnet Norway Hosting
www.eunet.no  T +47-22092958 M +47-93013940 F +47-22092901 FWD 484145