[vlc-devel] ATTN: removal of website playlist parsers

[David Flynn]

On 2009-04-15, Rémi Denis-Courmont <rem at videolan.org> wrote:
> Patents cannot be infringed by mere software, since mere software is 
> explicitly outside the scope of patents. In Europe. In other venues, 
> please refer to GPL2 section 7, which forbids the use of VLC should it 
> infringe patents.

According to the UK patent office,
that is unfortunately not quite true.  If you use a piece of software to
perform a patented (physical) transformation, eg video [de]coding, and you
end up with a physical thing that does it, eg, a computer, then the
system as a whole violates the patent.

publishing the souce code does not.  It gets more dubious with binaries.
It gets more dubious as to who is the one doing the violating.

The waters are very muddy here.  The risk is probably low while there
is no money associated with VLC.

If on the otherhand, you were an organisation with significant backing,
then i'd expect the risk to be far far greater.

You also have the fact that no one has taken any action so far, despite
these tools being quite prominent for a very long time.

..david

> I am not wilfully taking that risk. For instance, I don't use, or 
> distribute VLC in the US, neither do I encourage anyone to do so.

The biggest risk in the US, are cicumvention devices. rather than
patents.