4 ms·

Software patentability is limited in a lot of places, can this actually be an argument in favour of doing things using SDR?

by zurn 3y ago

mycall 3y ago
Could be a few GNURadio templates they are patenting?
zoobab 3y ago
"Software patentability is limited in a lot of places" In Europe, the new Unified Patent Court (UPC) will probably rubberstamp them, using the "as such" and the "technical effect" loopholes. Without any appeal possible to the European Court of Justice.
mytailorisrich 3y ago
It's not about software, it's the underlying technology. For example, LoRa uses spread spectrum and there are many patents on spread sprectrum in general (don't know about LoRa in particular).
- tonyarkles 3y ago
  It's a very specific form of spread spectrum that they've called Chirp Spread Spectrum and as far as I recall it is actually a pretty novel form of modulation.
- zurn 3y ago
  But in SDR, the "underlying technology" of radio modulation, spread spectrum, etc is your software, no?
  - tonyarkles 3y ago
    I appreciate where your head is at, but I don't think it's very likely that a court is going to agree with you. Contrast to the canonical "One-Click Shopping" patent, this patent covers radio waves of a specific type that you'll be producing and not just an abstract business process. Just because there's a way to violate that patent by writing code for a programmable radio doesn't mean that it's a software patent. Heck, in the middle ground between "one-click shopping" and LoRa modulation, you have things like audio and video codecs. These are primarily math-based patents, but they have had pretty broad patent protection for a long time compared to more abstract business-process/software patents. Where this might get interesting specifically for LoRa is that France is one of the rare places that doesn't seem to recognize AV codecs as patentable (and which is why VLC is distributed from France) and Semtech is based out of Grenoble!
  - mytailorisrich 3y ago
    No, for instance Chirp Spread Sprectrum (mentioned by @tonyarkles in another reply), which is what you would patent (and there are patents on it) has nothing to do with software, although it can be implemented in software using SDR.
tonyarkles 3y ago
Sorry, replied to one of the child posts. It's not a software patent, it's a radio modulation patent: https://patents.google.com/patent/US20160094269A1/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US20160094269A1/en and I'm not really that confident that it would be struck down if challenged; from what I'm remembering from digging into it, it is actually a pretty novel form of modulation that has some nice properties for the specific application they're using it for.

Software patentability is limited in a lot of places, can this actually be an argument in favour of doing things using SDR?

by zurn 3y ago

Software patentability is limited in a lot of places, can this actually be an argument in favour of doing things using SDR?

mycall 3y ago

Could be a few GNURadio templates they are patenting?

zoobab 3y ago

"Software patentability is limited in a lot of places" In Europe, the new Unified Patent Court (UPC) will probably rubberstamp them, using the "as such" and the "technical effect" loopholes. Without any appeal possible to the European Court of Justice.

mytailorisrich 3y ago

It's not about software, it's the underlying technology. For example, LoRa uses spread spectrum and there are many patents on spread sprectrum in general (don't know about LoRa in particular).

tonyarkles 3y ago
It's a very specific form of spread spectrum that they've called Chirp Spread Spectrum and as far as I recall it is actually a pretty novel form of modulation.
zurn 3y ago
But in SDR, the "underlying technology" of radio modulation, spread spectrum, etc is your software, no?
- tonyarkles 3y ago
  I appreciate where your head is at, but I don't think it's very likely that a court is going to agree with you. Contrast to the canonical "One-Click Shopping" patent, this patent covers radio waves of a specific type that you'll be producing and not just an abstract business process. Just because there's a way to violate that patent by writing code for a programmable radio doesn't mean that it's a software patent. Heck, in the middle ground between "one-click shopping" and LoRa modulation, you have things like audio and video codecs. These are primarily math-based patents, but they have had pretty broad patent protection for a long time compared to more abstract business-process/software patents. Where this might get interesting specifically for LoRa is that France is one of the rare places that doesn't seem to recognize AV codecs as patentable (and which is why VLC is distributed from France) and Semtech is based out of Grenoble!
- mytailorisrich 3y ago
  No, for instance Chirp Spread Sprectrum (mentioned by @tonyarkles in another reply), which is what you would patent (and there are patents on it) has nothing to do with software, although it can be implemented in software using SDR.

tonyarkles 3y ago

Sorry, replied to one of the child posts. It's not a software patent, it's a radio modulation patent: https://patents.google.com/patent/US20160094269A1/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US20160094269A1/en and I'm not really that confident that it would be struck down if challenged; from what I'm remembering from digging into it, it is actually a pretty novel form of modulation that has some nice properties for the specific application they're using it for.