[Asterisk-Users] more voip patent madness

[trixter aka Bret McDanel]

On Thu, 2005-10-20 at 06:13 -0400, Paul wrote:
> I'm going to patent email and web methods for discussing patent issues.
> 
> I'm also going to patent methods of emigrating from the US to escape 
> inane patent laws.
> 
That isnt the primary reason, its just one in a long list :)


> You can't reply without a license from me.


I just filed a disclosure document so I beat you to it, and have 2 years
to acutally patent it.  :P

But seriously with the way the patent stuff is getting, especially what
I read on groklaw, it is entirely possible to patent selling softgoods
like voip.  Small companies cant fight that when so many of those patent
holders are fairly well funded companies that do nothing but file
patents on anything they can get away with.  That makes it really hard
to operate a business with any service in America (afaik no other
government allows such sillyness to that extent).  There is getting to
be a real need to form a trade association to protect the ability to
offer that.  With many of the patents that exist on VoIP technologies
already (do you have enough to fight sprint-nexttel with their 'about
100 patents' ?  What about the German company?).  Some of these patents
are vague enough that combined it would seem that any packetization of
voice onto a data network would qualify.  

Scary thought in my opinion because it makes it such that using asterisk
for non-commerical uses in your own home, either just for fun or as an
answering machine on steroids, can potentially get you into legal hot
water.

-- 
Trixter http://www.0xdecafbad.com     Bret McDanel
UK +44 870 340 4605   Germany +49 801 777 555 3402
US +1 360 207 0479 or +1 516 687 5200
FreeWorldDialup: 635378
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