"I'd rather not touch anything which involves patents at all."

Unfortunately, that's not something you can reasonably expect, ever. Mike Pall made a statement about the IP of LuaJIT [1], and made the point that while his own contributions are freely donated to the public domain...

"I cannot guarantee it to be free of third-party IP however. In fact nobody can. Writing software has become a minefield and any moderately complex piece of software is probably (unknowingly to the author) encumbered by hundreds of dubious patents."

[1] http://lua-users.org/lists/lua-l/2009-11/msg00089.html

And you can avoid software which you know is patent encumbered. Even if I'm stuck walking through a minefield, it makes sense to avoid stepping in the couple places I know there are mines.

What you can do to minimize the risk of patent issues is to only distribute the software where software patents are not granted. EU for example is to my knowledge somewhat safe, through not completely.

That's an odd definition of patent troll. In my understanding, patent trolls don't actually produce any products.

Because as with every political issue, the definition has been twisted by the well-advertised incumbents to transmute grassroots concern for change into status quo preservation.

The actual issue is broad and vague patents on obvious things, where the novelty is confined to their obfuscated wording.

Techniques that are commonly independently reinvented should not fall under the patent system at all. But then some lawler figures out how to make a tenuous connection with a completely lineage-unrelated patent and they go trolling for settlements, regardless of whether they're a small company that does only this or staff counsel for a large company that also happens to manufacture things.

But no shit large companies like IBM, Apple, Oracle, etc want to limit patent reform to "non-practicing entities" and continue their general low-stakes protection racket while screwing over the little guys (genuine patent holders and patent victims alike).

From what I've seen, there's a lot more trawling than trolling going on. "Troll" as the creature who demands toll for a bridge he didn't build seems the more fitting analogy.

I guess Apple would more accurately be called "patent bully" or "patent abuser".

How are they either?

They have sued over patents that should never have been granted.

And which patents do you think should never have been granted? Those supposed bad patents have been held true in courts, repeatedly, around the world. Perhaps you just want a boogeyman to blame for what you perceive to be a broken system?

A good example is the design patent for the iPad. That specific design had plenty of prior art, hence making it obviously invalid.

Just because courts let you do something doesn't make it ethical.

Except there was not prior art, the iPad patent was found valid through reexamination and at court

The court found it met the requirements of the law.

The law/case law is far too loose with the requirements for novelty.

Being upheld by a court does not mean something is a good patent.

Mathematics are not supposed to be patentable at all but people manage to sneak in pure algorithms by gluing them to an arbitrary machine. The system is quite clearly broken.

>Being upheld by a court does not mean something is a good patent.

The only good patent is the one that stands up in court.

You're just being snarky and not actually playing a game of semantics, right? Patent that progresses the arts vs. patent that makes money, regulation tries to make these ideas correlate as much as possible but there are flaws.

If nothing else, 2001 - A space odyssey very clearly has information devices with almost exactly the same shape of the iPad.

The Star Trek PADD is not too far off either.

The patent is bogus to any sane and honest individual.

In what way do any of these look like an iPad? (apart from being vaguely rectangular)

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=star+trek+padd&num=30&clie...

First on the left has similarities. It is indeed not that close. It's the space odyssey one that is much closer.

> If nothing else, 2001 - A space odyssey very clearly has information devices with almost exactly the same shape of the iPad.

Apparently it wasn't.

>The Star Trek PADD is not too far off either.

Neither was this

Exactly, H264 supposes to be a patent pool that as long as you pay the royalty and get a license, you are free of other patent trolling. Mess these two up can significantly hinder the positive side of patent pooling.

Would you use a implementation has unknown software patent license issues or would you use a implementation that has known software patent pool to protect you from patent bully?

I am not saying this is the best solution (you still pay royalty fees for some software patent), but the general idea of having a patent pool to protect you from unknown patent trolling is a positive thing.

Unfortunately, none of that is true.

MPEG-LA doesn't give you a licence to all known H.264 patents.

The only way they protect you from trolls is if the troll is happy to take a cut of their existing take, which if you had a solid patent with no FRAND obligation, would probably be silly.

They will troll the people offering you alternatives though.

Patent pools are an inefficient government solution to a government created problem. They looked like they might actually fix this, but the amount of rent the government lets these corporations collect as a tax on digital communication means they have the lobbying power to keep it rolling.

MPEG1 is old enough that the patents should have expired by now.

The H.264 MPEG-LA patent pool is really pretty reasonably priced for any commercial use I can imagine. The only company outside the pool and suing for massive license fees that I am aware of is Google (Motorola).

I'm not sure of the current state of the H.265 pool and license so I make no comment on them.