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Tandberg Attempts To Patent Open Source Code

Posted by Soulskill on from the cut-and-paste-your-way-to-innovation dept.

An anonymous reader writes "As if the current situation with software patents wasn't bad enough, it appears a new phenomenon is emerging: companies are watching the commit logs of open source projects for ideas to patent. In this case, Tandberg filed a patent that was step-by-step identical to an algorithm developed by the x264 project — a mere two months after the original commit. The particular algorithm is a useful performance optimization in a wide variety of video encoders, including Theora."

2 of 187 comments (clear)

  1. If you can't invent it... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    ...steal it! Those OSS hippies will never have the gumption to fight back...

  2. Re:i love patents by LordAndrewSama · · Score: 4, Funny

    Step 1) Patent a process by which members of an organization transfer a circular container amongst themselves, incrementing the capital value within the container after each transfer.
    Step 2) Sue church for profiting from your patents for the last thousand years.
    Step 3) Profit
    Step 4) Damnation.

    Of course, there's always the slim slim hope that this will show the ridiculousness of the patent system and it will be overhauled.