Can We Legislate Past the H.264 Debate?

Midnight Warrior writes "We could solve the H.264 debate if a country's legislature were to mandate that any patents that contribute to an industry-recognized standard were unenforceable in the application of that standard. Ideally, each standard would also be required to have a 'reference design' that could be used without further licensing. This could also solve problems with a ton of other deeply entrenched areas like hard drives, DRAM, etc. RAND tries to solve this strictly within industry, but both the presence of submarine patents and the low bar required to obtain a patent have made an obvious mess. Individual companies also use patent portfolios to set up mutually assured destruction. I'm not convinced that industry can solve this mess that government created. But I'm not stupid; this clearly has a broad ripple effect. Are there non-computer industries where this would be fatal? What if the patents were unenforceable only if the standard had a trademark and the implementer was compliant at the time of 'infringement'? Then, the patents could still be indirectly licensed, but it would force strict adherence to standards and would require the patent holders to fund the trademark group to defend it to the end. In the US model, of course."

Comments

Wow, that makes so much sense!

[dptalia]

Oh sure, lets get the government involved in this! Because they're:
Efficient
Looking out for the people
Focused
Not interested in pork
Uninfluenced by patent holders

Re:Uh huh

[Anonymous Coward]

Just try to buy a camera without it - is the opposite of freedom. Market freedom or personal freedom.

Oh, yeah, the "freedom" to control what other people offer to sell you. I always forget about that one.

Can we legislate? I dunno. I think that requires a certain amount of political will, and I don't know that we're there yet. I'd like to think it's in our interest to do so. Possibly be a benefit to the business as well. We're more competitive when we are forced to compete, rather than having a few players tightly control things. But, then you are one of the few controllers, your perspective changes.

I love how part of the Slashdot userbase cries about Big Brother-like surveillance, while another faction wants Big Brother to save them from even the most trivial thing. "Oh no! My favorite video codec isn't popular! Mr Government come save us!"

Re:Patents system is based on 18th Century technol

[BitZtream]

Could you patent lawnmowers? Of course not - patenting the idea of cutting grass can be laughed off by everyone, except for a few lawyers and jurors in East Texas.

Not only are you an idiot, you're ignorant. Once apon a time, lawnmowers of many different designs were patented. Those patents have long since expired which is why everyone and their brother makes one.

You aren't patenting the 'idea of cutting grass' you are patenting the design and/or methods to make a machine that makes it faster than using scissors.