Germany Reaffirms Position Against Software Patents, Free Software Triumphant

Dr. Roy Schestowitz

2013-08-07 16:04:54 UTC
Modified: 2013-08-07 16:04:54 UTC

Germany flag

Summary: A Mannheim court impedes Nokia's assault on Free software, letting WebM stay free and GPL-compatible

Germany made a lot of headlines when its politicians called for the end of software patents [1, 2]. They were not alone. Professor Becker [1, 2], for example (German name but US citizen) continues to generate headlines to this effect (most of the media is occupied with patent trolls) and the Nokia assault on WebM/VP8 (through MPEG-LA) has just fallen flat on its face in Germany. To quote the WebM project site:

Today a court in Mannheim, Germany, ruled that VP8 does not infringe a patent owned and asserted by Nokia. This decision is an important and positive step towards the WebM Project's ultimate goal: ensuring the web community has an open, high-quality, freely licensed video codec. Google's intervention in the underlying lawsuit (Nokia v. HTC) was a strong show of support for open standards like VP8.

This ruling from Mannheim will probably be daemonised or publicly distorted by anti-Android lobbyists (e.g. Florian Müller), but it is what it is. ⬆

SLAPP Censorship - Part 168 Out of 200: When Choosing Clients Recklessly and Poorly Self-Harm is Inevitable: "If you're doing something hard and nobody hates it, you probably aren't doing it. If the right people hate it and those people happen to be some of the worst people alive, so much the better."
Over at Tux Machines...: GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 01, 2026: IRC logs for Tuesday, September 01, 2026
FSF Staff Uses 'CoC' to Stop Conversation About Autistici/Inventati in Relation to Free Software: The list is already heavily moderated
IBM Allegedly Stopped Hiring (This Tends to Coincide With Mass Layoffs): Is a hiring freeze an echo of layoffs? Yes, definitely.
Something Big is Happening at IBM This Week/Month: Some people at IBM (and Red Hat) are panicking
Gemini Links 01/09/2026: Biscuits, Epstein Files, Power Users, and Alhena 5.6.8: Links for the day
Links 01/09/2026: Almost 5,000 Missing/Dead in Nepal-China Flood and Marijuana Factory Explodes: Links for the day
September at IBM: Silent Layoffs on Day 1: PIPocalypse at IBM
Last Month IRC Entered Its 39th Year and It's Still Growing (New IRC Networks): There are 511+ known IRC networks
Links 01/09/2026: Climate, Disinformation, Microsoft Overworking People: Links for the day
Richard Stallman's Site Still Offline (Third Day), But Richard Stallman is Active Online: he is busy online despite his site not being accessible so far this week
PIP Layoffs at Microsoft, Even in India: Microsoft is trying to hide the true scale of the layoffs
Layoff Trackers Are a Sham, They're Like US 'Unemployment Data': Layoff trackers are similarly misleading as they only measure what companies openly admit and register with WARN notices
The Peculiar Case of OSNews, Which Experiments With Slopfarming: It wasn't published in error. It has been there for two months.
Russian Federation is Removing Windows From Computers: Windows is going "out of fashion"
XBox CEO Has No Clue What She is Selling: Some people believe Microsoft will parcel and offload the whole "gaming" unit to some other companies
analognowhere.com and xkcd.com Selling Physical Copies of Webcomics: That's one way to support their work
PIP/GVSA at Microsoft: Mass Layoffs Disguised as Something Else: Microsoft is trying to cheapen the workforce because the numbers don't add up
Microsoft Lunduke Uses Twitter ("X") Because It's Algorithmically Designed to Boost His Worldview/s, He Ignores What "X" Is: Maybe all those people really deserve one another
Over at Tux Machines...: GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, August 31, 2026: IRC logs for Monday, August 31, 2026
Censorship by Threats: It should be noted that the Web site of Richard Stallman will soon enter its third day of downtime
In Romania, GNU/Linux Reaches 6%, According to Clownflare: Tomorrow we'll see the latest data from statCounter (for September)
Gemini Links 01/09/2026: Denali Park Train Trip, Crafts, and Community-Building in smol.pub: Links for the day
Microsoft Workers Doing 80 Hours a Week After Microsoft Culled Their Colleagues: there are days when they work 17 hours a day (barely any time left to sleep and eat) and work starts at 5AM
IBM Defrauds Shareholders With Fake News (Bribed Press) About "Quantum": That says a lot about the state of "Tech Giants" and also the utterly shameless state of the media
Record Highs for GNU/Linux, Especially in the United States of America: the "market share" of GNU/Linux is about 9%, still about a third of what Vista 11 stands at
PIPocalypse at IBM: Silent layoffs
Spending Over a Million Bucks on Lawsuits Abroad When There's a Big Mortgage to Pay in America: Priorities, priorities...
Gemini Links 31/08/2026: Announcing ROOPHLOCH 2026, smol.pub Discussion, and LLM Plagiarism Engines Target Geminispace: Links for the day
Richard Stallman's GNU Turns 43 in 4 Weeks, FSF Growing: In a few weeks GNU turns 43
IBM's Cuts Are Worsening Security in GNU/Linux: IBM is still run by the same idiot who proposed taking over Red Hat
Microsoft: Work Weekends Too: Microsoft literally working its workers to death
Links 31/08/2026: Anthropic Sued Again for Copyright Infringement of Massive Scale, 'Tokenmaxxing' Shows Slop is a Worthless Liability: Links for the day
Links 31/08/2026: "Teslas Are Still Driving Into Oncoming Freight Trains" and "LLM Moats Quickly Evaporating": Links for the day
Stallman Has Explained Slop is "Marketing Hype Campaign" and Torvalds Agreed. The Difference is the Bribes.: So be like Stallman
Debian Project Discards About 25% of the Votes on LLM Slop, Microsoft Votes in the General Resolution (GR): "[t]he rules of the vote saw community members asked to rank each of the eight proposals. Just under 600 people voted, but Debian’s election team rejected many for unspecified reasons, leaving almost 450 valid votes to count."
Essentiality of Rest and Killing Oneself for Vicious Companies: Working for Microsoft is foolish
In the UK, Bing (Microsoft) Down to Lowest Level Since January: our tax money being passed to Microsoft via MoUs (back door deals with kickbacks)
SLAPP Censorship - Part 167 Out of 200: The Court of Appeal Might be the Next Step: Today is our last vacation day
German Government Sponsors IBM Because of GNU/Linux: Flatpak is sponsored by, run, and controlled by IBM
Richard Stallman Speaks to Christine Hall of FOSS Force, stallman.org is Down for Over a Day: interview does a good job addressing the hype about LLMs too
Over at Tux Machines...: GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, August 30, 2026: IRC logs for Sunday, August 30, 2026
Gemini Links 31/08/2026: Holidays, Stream of Consciousness, and Posting Online: Links for the day

Germany Reaffirms Position Against Software Patents, Free Software Triumphant

Recent Techrights' Posts