Linked by Eugenia Loli-Queru on Sat 15th May 2004 08:23 UTC
It is when I read articles like this that I have "my blood all going up to my head" (that's a Greek saying for people that get angry). So apparently, Apple is trying to patent "transparent windows that do a certain action after fading away". While I don't personally find this "innovation/invention" patentable, it's fine with me: Apple is doing the best it can to secure its business (maybe I would do the same if I had shareholders on my back).
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"Fifteen years. 6 + 9 = 15. It's almost like they deliberately waited until the format was widespread."
They probably did, which is why I said it's an unfortunate case.
"Anyway, you can't blame the users for not getting a licence. JPEG is an ISO standard so they expected that it was patent/licence-free. Don't tell me they should have done a patent search. Who has the time to do this for everything they are using/developing? I think Friedman's quote ("you can't write more than 1000 lines of code these days without hitting on a patent -- without your knowledge") is quite accurate. Imagine how costly would be software development if programmers were doing patent searchs at every 1000 lines of code."
No, you can't blame the users for using a standard. You can blame ISO for making it a standard when it shouldn't have been, if that's the case.
I am with you in saying an overhaul is needed. But I think older, unenforced patents should be made into free standards so long as the patent holders consents. We can't just take patents from people.