The VideoLAN Forums

How VLC free open source project coexists with royalty license model of MPEG?
Thank you

Those patents are not valid in Europe.

I'm not sure about EP, but there are patents filed in DE, FR, GB covering US essential portfolio counterpart. What I’m trying to understand that if any patent analysis was done.

It seems I cannot use it in US legally, unless $5 paid to MPEG LA, unfortunatly we are not free from software patents

I’ve done a little research.

There are about 95 US granted patents covering essentials for MPEG2 coding/decoding, some of them expired or soon will be expired and some of them valid up until 2030ish
There is pretty much equivalent number of EP patents covering the same subject, so it is enforced or somewhat enforced in Europe.

My question again, how you deal with this or do you push liability to person that downloads the program?

Another question stumble in my mind, you release under GPL, which clearly states that if subject matter covered by patents is must be license for free , which is not a case, at least in general, so are you in violation of GPL terms?

I know those are the hard questions from the person who just want to use the program, but they have to be answered.

Thank you.

It should be noted that software patents in Europe are either not possible in certain European countries or in a gray zone. See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_p ... Convention