[Asterisk-Users] g729 status in New Zealand

[Steve Underwood]

Chris Bagnall wrote:

>>The question is really un-important for this list, it is ONLY 
>>important
>>between the person who thinks that they can use the g729 
>>codec ignoring
>>the patent or considering that it is not legally enforcable 
>>for them and
>>their lawyer who will give them concise information about the legal
>>situation in their jurisdiction.
>>    
>>
>
>No, I don't think that's the case at all. I for one (and I'd imagine many
>other list members around the world) would be very interested if there were
>to be an informed discussion about which countries' legal systems
>would/could enforce the patent and which countries won't/can't.
>
>If the OP who asked about the patent's enforcability in NZ were to seek
>legal advice in his jurisdiction and post that info back to the list then I
>would think that would be valuable info to fellow asterisk users in his
>country.
>  
>
People don't like the informed discussion. We've tried that one several 
times. They only like a discussion that ends in "I can do whatever I 
like". Search the mailing list archive. This is a regular topic.

1) There is no "the patent". There is a fairly long list of patents 
relevant to G.729. France Telecom, The U of Sherbrooke, ST 
Semiconductors and various others hold them. Sipro acts as front man for 
a pool of many of these patents, and provides one stop shopping for a 
licence. There may, of course, be people holding relevant patents who 
are not in the pool. The last time I looked, a licence from Sipro 
offered no indemnification against other patent holders crawling out of 
the woodwork.

2) Some of the relevant patents are purely methods of speeding up the 
computation. These are pure software patents, and they shouldn't exist 
anywhere but the US (though I have never checked). Since the are only 
speedups, they don't actually block you implementing G.729. Avoiding 
them just makes the implementation run slower. I know of a patent ST 
hold in the US which is in this category.

3) The signal processing patents should be granted anywhere the patent 
holders have applied for them. Since these are of broad value, that 
would be pretty much any major market. NZ is rather small, but might 
well have bi-lateral agreements that get things patented there almost by 
default. Some small countries are like that.

Regards,
Steve