jori.hamalainen@teliasonera.com wrote:
TIVO GRANTED EIGHT NEW DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN PATENTS The
United States
Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) recently issued new patents to TiVo covering important aspects of DVR software and hardware design.
What can I say but Aaaaaaarrrggghhhhh!!!!!!!
What was that Clash song again? "I'm so bored with the U.S.A."...
Well, thanks to the EU commission that has repeatedly ignored the EP decisions, we're going the same route.
And again if open source communities have made such features and published them before the date Tivo applied for patent, that is the easy way of removing the patent.
"Easy" if you have enough time and money. Most small and medium sized businesses (not to speak of open source developers) simply don't have the resources to have a patent overturned, so it would be better to simply disallow software patents in the first place. That's what the European Parliament has repeatedly asked. And what the European Commission has repeatedly ignored.
Bye