Codecs and Software Patents - Part VI - The European Patent Office, Nokia, Microsoft, Sisvel, and More
Previously:
Yesterday we explained that the European Patent Office (EPO) was part of this problem - and the previous part mentioned Nokia in passing.
Each time the management of the European Patent Office makes it "OK" to grant software patents it is in effect attacking Europe. At whose expense or on whose behalf? Patent attorneys, law firms, and monopolies from other continents. To us the ordinary people ("hoi polloi") who aren't lawyers it is a tax. This codec tax, for example, is something we all collectively pay. And the payments grow over time. It is a form of cartel (akin to price-fixing in hardware). In the media, there is little or no discussion about it (not anymore). "Most traces back to Arse Teknika," (slop) an associate explained. And the journalism there is appalling, it's a site that's financially connected to the culprits, including Microsoft. GAFAM takes licences (old) that the rest of us cannot afford, by which they cement their monopolies (through software patents on streaming and other forms of multimedia encoding/delivery/multiplexing).
From Nokia, we get "only a vague reference without naming patents explicitly," as an associate noted (this mentions patents as "video services"). They typically use terms like "IP", "royalty", and "licensing" (monopolies on mathematics).
Worse yet, they rely on Microsoft-sponsored mouthpieces like Florian Müller. We're meant to think this is OK. They want us to get used to it and tolerate the injustice.
"Anyway," an associate noted, "if Florian is say-for-pay then what he says is a data point because some company has paid him to say that."
More recently he was shilling for Microsoft to absorb his former employer. He kept engaging in revisionism, even in book form, then shilled for patent trolls.
There is this shadowy industry they've subbed 'lobbying'.
Müller is still being paid to do this stuff, sometimes he boasts or gloats about it.
"A big question is which company?" an associate noted.
Consider the role played by the UPC in all this. The UPC is an illegal kangaroo court headed by a software patents booster whose associates sent SLAPPS (or threats thereof) our way. It is basically a form of corruption. This corruption is bolstered by extortion (even against bloggers).
What does this mean to Free software users? Well, they don't get "access" and the Linux Foundation (LF) is part of the problem; it has 'normalised' software patents along with OIN, a front group of IBM and GAFAM.
So we're not being represented by the LF, which basically serves those who attack us. People really need to check the facts and then discuss them with friends. Many wrongly assume or are lulled (they are misled or are assured) that the LF - by virtue of using the "Linux" word - helps Linux users. It does not. It is controlled by its biggest sponsors, who use the sponsorship to exercise control over Linux (less than 3% of the LF's budget).
"LF is partially at fault there," an associate said. "Among other things, if they spent more that 2% of their budget on kernel development, then this would be much less of an issue."
Here in Europe, 15 years ago Nokia was a top contributor to Linux (#3). Then Microsoft's Ballmer and Elop infiltrated the company and destroyed it. Nowadays Nokia is a hostile company that lobbies for software patents and infiltrates courts that assess patentability and violate constitutions.
"Nokia seems to be continuing the direction Microsoft Elop aimed it in after he crippled and nearly destroyed it," an associate opined. "Nokia got out of handsets and seems to be exiting ICT in preference for being a patent troll and in working to subvert the EU into breaking the law and acting as if software patents were valid on either side of the pond."
Whatever Nokia used to be, it's certainly not an ally and a lot of the turmoil at the EPO is the fault of companies like Nokia. The "enforcement" of patents by Nokia is sometimes done through proxies (trolls like Sisvel, cited above). █