H.264 came out in 2003. Shouldn’t the patents associated with it have expired by now? 23 years is more than 20 years from the filing date or else the codec’s release itself is prior art. The 17 years from issuance rule ended in 1995. I don’t think they can have any Lemelson style submarine patents that are still valid.
Well, we’re barely in the era where people can safely say “MPEG-1 is definitely out of patents and we’re pretty damn confident Layer III (MP3) is too”. Patents expire on the day they’ll be set to expire, but unfortunately, patent lawyers hired by big companies don’t expire that easily.
H.264 came out in 2003. Shouldn’t the patents associated with it have expired by now? 23 years is more than 20 years from the filing date or else the codec’s release itself is prior art. The 17 years from issuance rule ended in 1995. I don’t think they can have any Lemelson style submarine patents that are still valid.
Well, we’re barely in the era where people can safely say “MPEG-1 is definitely out of patents and we’re pretty damn confident Layer III (MP3) is too”. Patents expire on the day they’ll be set to expire, but unfortunately, patent lawyers hired by big companies don’t expire that easily.