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>These blocks require royalties and are _heavily_ protected by MPEG LA. If open-source software was released that could control these blocks, you could possibly

>These blocks require royalties and are _heavily_ protected by MPEG LA. If open-source software was released that could control these blocks, you could possibly expect a huge lawsuit against the Raspberry Pi Trading arm. I think you're confusing copyright and patents. Just because some technology is patented, it doesn't mean it can't be open sourced.

gjsman-1000 7y ago
True, it could be open-sourced, but the RPT would no longer exist after the lawsuits are finished. Edit: Even if the RPT wrote their own firmware, not from Broadcom, and released it, they would still risk being sued to pieces for patent violations galore. After all, if you license H.265 alone, there are over 1,100+ pages in the Table of Contents alone just listing all of the patents worldwide on it. Edit 2: And they could be possibly sued by Broadcom for violating the IP sharing agreement used for developing the chip by developing an open-source blob software.
- hedora 7y ago
  The first sale doctrine might save them. If I buy your patented thing from you, that exhausts your patent rights for that copy of the thing. If I modify it, and do something you don’t like with it, you can’t come after me under patent law. Note that I didn’t say anything about contract or copyright law—they may have signed something saying they wouldn’t reverse engineer the chip, or the sale could come with an end user Eula to that effect.
- garmaine 7y ago
  You're assuming RPT would write the firmware. There's no reason that has to be the case.
  - gjsman-1000 7y ago
    You can find open-source firmware attempts by the community, but they haven't gotten much farther than booting the Pi. I'm just saying that if RPT tried to write their own firmware, they could be in big legal trouble, so I wouldn't expect any open-source firmware from RPT anytime soon.

gjsman-1000 7y ago

True, it could be open-sourced, but the RPT would no longer exist after the lawsuits are finished. Edit: Even if the RPT wrote their own firmware, not from Broadcom, and released it, they would still risk being sued to pieces for patent violations galore. After all, if you license H.265 alone, there are over 1,100+ pages in the Table of Contents alone just listing all of the patents worldwide on it. Edit 2: And they could be possibly sued by Broadcom for violating the IP sharing agreement used for developing the chip by developing an open-source blob software.

hedora 7y ago
The first sale doctrine might save them. If I buy your patented thing from you, that exhausts your patent rights for that copy of the thing. If I modify it, and do something you don’t like with it, you can’t come after me under patent law. Note that I didn’t say anything about contract or copyright law—they may have signed something saying they wouldn’t reverse engineer the chip, or the sale could come with an end user Eula to that effect.
garmaine 7y ago
You're assuming RPT would write the firmware. There's no reason that has to be the case.
- gjsman-1000 7y ago
  You can find open-source firmware attempts by the community, but they haven't gotten much farther than booting the Pi. I'm just saying that if RPT tried to write their own firmware, they could be in big legal trouble, so I wouldn't expect any open-source firmware from RPT anytime soon.