[Asterisk-Users] Re: Compiling Asterisk with G.723.1

[Steve Underwood]

Tony Hoyle wrote:

> Steve Underwood wrote:
>
>>>
>> I didn't say one patent covered all the world. I said the patents on 
>> codecs exist all over the world. WIPO is simplifying this a bit, but 
>> its still pretty expensive to get a patent everywhere. I know of no 
>> country where the key aspects of a codec cannot be patented.
>>
> Outside the US you can't patent software or algorythms, and a codec is 
> (usually) both of these, therefore not patentable outside the US.  
> This is what allows things like the xvid project to exist, for 
> example, which breaks several US patents...  Fraunhoffer somehow 
> apparently managed to get some in europe but it was never decided 
> whether they were valid or not (commonly it is thought that they'd 
> have failed under legal challenge as the wording of EU patent law is 
> very clear).

Try looking up the EU patents related to any of the ETSI codecs, like 
GSM EFR, half rate, AMR, etc. If Fraunhoffer's patents can be 
challenged, they must have screwed up the way they worded them.

Regards,
Steve