Harm to standards and compatibility

Patents harm standards by blocking the inclusion of certain techniques, or, if patented techniques are permitted, then they make implementation of the standard dependent on the permission and terms of the patent holder.

Standards with patent problems

• GIF used to have patent problems when using LZW compression. These patents are now expired.
• Multimedia Home Platform
• HTML5
• Jpeg2000 - the web standard that many worked on but nobody used
• mpeg (mp3 and mpeg video)
• OOXML - a Microsoft document format
• OpenGL 3
• TLS-authz
• H.264
• Real Media - audio and video formats with patent problems
• ISO 9660 Rock Ridge Interchange Protocol - afflicted by the Microsoft FAT patents

Related pages on ESP Wiki

• audio-video patents
• Interoperability exceptions - a legislative idea for a partial victory
• Harm with neither litigation nor threats

External links

General articles

• The problems of patents in standards, by Bruce Perens
• Analysis on balance: Standardisation and Patents, by Georg Greve
• Microsoft's Open Specification Promise: No Assurance for GPL, by SFLC
• Patents in Standards, from wikibook "FOSS Open Standards"
• Standards, Patents and the Dynamics of Innovation on the World Wide Web, by w3c's Daniel Weitzner
• Wikipedia: Submarine patents and Patent ambush
• A Jesuit's Guide to Open Standards, about patents and standards, by Glyn Moody

Specific standards harmed

• The Widgets Updating standard, of W3C blocked by Apple's patent
• IETF: Please reject the "Transport Layer Security (TLS) Authorization Extensions" proposed standard, by FSF
• Microsoft: "Our software patents preclude interoperability", 2006 press release by FSFE
• The VideoLan media player and other software for working with video formats are threatened by software patents
• Does FFmpeg infringe patents? We don't know
• The jpeg file format was threatened, article by PubPat