Tandberg attempts to patent x264 open source algorithm

[tiagosilva29]

  Quote

There?s been a lot of very obnoxious misuse of software patents in recent years. This ranges from patent trolls wielding submarine patents to overly-generic patents being used to scare everyone else out of a business. But at least in most of the cases, the patents were an original idea of some sort, even if that idea was far too general to be patented.

The situation just got worse. We now have a company scraping open source commit logs and patenting them.

Today, someone brought this patent application by Tandberg to my attention. It looked like a mildly interesting idea --- and then I was hit with a freight train of d?j? vu.

(...)

So why the d?j? vu? Because this patent application was an exact, step-by-step description of the algorithm I came up with for decimate_score (and later coeff_level_run) in x264 in 2008!

This is not coincidence. We already know from one of their employees who has stopped by x264′s IRC channel that they follow x264 development. We also know that the guy whose name is on that patent application files patents for practically everything he comes up with. Well, this time, it looks like he ran out of ideas, so he had to go use the cheat sheet: open source.

(...)

Source: Jason Garrett-Glaser

[+Majesticmerc MVC]

This is pretty messed up, although not entirely unexpected. Patent trolls gon' troll.

[lalalawawawa]

Exactly why software patenting should be banned or something.

[Pupik]

How is this even legal?

[Digitalx]

it shouldn't be banned but it should have a 12 month public and private consult/input grace period where any objections or otherwise can be ironed out or denied or voted on or whatever and not by just a small body of industry persons or a "jury" but the wider public, internet, blogs etc and other companies so if for example apple try to patent something abhorrent microsoft, google etc can in and just go "no, this is why" as can the public or whatever and prevent it from being granted.

first start would be abolishing all existing bs ones for things like common things (multi touch, right click, GUI's for example.) purge the system of garbage then restart it all with a new foundation and process.

[Growled Member]

This is very messed up. Of course, our entire software patent system is pretty messed up these days.

[Southern Patriot]

  On 29/11/2010 at 19:38, Growled said:

This is very messed up. Of course, our entire software patent patent, copyright, and trademark system is pretty messed up these days.

Fixed that for you.

[+M2Ys4U Subscriber¹]

  On 29/11/2010 at 19:41, roadwarrior said:

Fixed that for you.

This ^

[bjoswald]

"What? <product> is successful and no one has claimed it? Mine, mine, mine!"

Sounds like Apple/Microsoft behavior.