SGI patents relating OpenGL

[nanonyme]

US patents expire 20 years after they are filed, not issued so...
Texture compression patent expires on 2017 and floating point texture patent on 2018. Wonder if they have more patents in their portfolio that could harm implementing a free OpenGL-like API. ^^

[deanjo]

US patents expire 20 years after they are filed, not issued so...
Texture compression patent expires on 2017 and floating point texture patent on 2018. Wonder if they have more patents in their portfolio that could harm implementing a free OpenGL-like API. ^^

Texture compression patent I believe belongs to S3 and not SGI.

[nanonyme]

Oh, sorry. Well, it expires on 2018 anyway.
Lemme rephrase the question: can you guys think of any patents owned by any companies still that are likely to become problems in the long run?

[whizse]

Ho hum, it's been mentioned before that it's probably better not to go looking for this stuff. Plausible deniability and all that I guess?

[deanjo]

Oh, sorry. Well, it expires on 2018 anyway.
Lemme rephrase the question: can you guys think of any patents owned by any companies still that are likely to become problems in the long run?

Well let's put it this way, most likely there will be. By then there is a strong possibility that there will be someone, somewhere, that creates a new "feature" for which licensing would be required. It's the nature of the beast I'm afraid and because of it FLOSS solutions will almost always behind their closed counter parts in areas where radical changes can occur such as graphics.

[nanonyme]

Ho hum, it's been mentioned before that it's probably better not to go looking for this stuff. Plausible deniability and all that I guess?

Maybe you could go something like "I didn't understand what the patent said so I didn't realize I broke it"?

[deanjo]

Maybe you could go something like "I didn't understand what the patent said so I didn't realize I broke it"?

Wouldn't hold up. Ignorance has never been a working defense when it comes to patents.

[crazycheese]

I think patents have lost nothing in an open standard, like openGL. Whats the point of OpenGL if its not open?

[nanonyme]

I think patents have lost nothing in an open standard, like openGL. Whats the point of OpenGL if its not open?

It's up to the patent holder to decide what the patented technology can be used with, no matter how free or open the use case.

[KAMiKAZOW]

US patents expire 20 years after they are filed, not issued so...
Texture compression patent expires on 2017 and floating point texture patent on 2018. Wonder if they have more patents in their portfolio that could harm implementing a free OpenGL-like API. ^^

Didn't SGI sell all OpenGL-related patents to Microsoft 5 or so years ago?