On Tue, 14 Aug 2007, Adrian Schröter wrote:
MP3 is the best example for this. Althought it is patented it violates EU laws and still (we will see what future brings) cannot be enforced in the whole EU. So we need to have a SUSE linux without MP3 only because of US limitations.
This is not true, the mp3 patents works also in europe or germany. (It is no software patent, it is a patent of the algorithm).
It is just that they these stuff seems to be free for private use, but any product needs to license it also in europe or germany.
Any court ever said so? There are different points of view whether you ask patent owners and patent offices or the other side who fights software patents. There are many patents here, which are very likely illegal software patents and not enforcable. I think the MP3 patent would have a very hard fight to win, as this was implemented as software from the very beginning. Also if I'm not completely wrong there is a big difference between using a patent and selling a product using it. But that's why I said such an alternative build service needs financial and legal help :-)
As well as the decss problem In Germany as well.
decss might be more a copyright problem than a patent problem.
Until a short time ago reverse engineering was perfectly legal here to reach interoperability. Don't know the current state. It gets worser and worser each year. Ciao -- http://www.dstoecker.eu/ (PGP key available)