HDMI Forum Rejects Open-Source HDMI 2.1 Driver Support Sought By AMD

[reavertm]

Good. Hopefully AMD stops providing HDMI in their video cards and others might follow.

[piotrj3]

no that is not at all how patents work. Two companies/people can independently come up with a similar solution/invention but if one of them have patented it then the other is in violation. Clean room only solves the copyright problem, the only solution to the patent problem is to either abolish software patents, wait till they are expired or license them.



HDMI IF also have a patent pool which you gain access to if you license.

Patents protect you if there is no prior work. If 1st company develops something first or at least has somewhere documented creation of idea before date patent is requested, then they can present prior work for sake of defense against patents. This is how for example Cloudflare striked down blackbird legal troll, and how AV1 codec relies a lot of prior works documentation for potential patent defense in some cases.

[F.Ultra]

Except this isn't protected by patent law. It's protected by license agreement and that is copyright law.

You claimed that one could avoid patents by reverse engineering.

HDMI is also covered by patents, they are just not public on which patents they have. What you are talking about is the license agreement to be allowed to sell stuff with the HDMI logo, which is something AMD would loose if they made the code public and yes that part is copyright law, AMD is not brining up the patent situation because as long as they are HDMI members they have access to the patents so for them this is not a patent issue at the moment.

[F.Ultra]

Patents protect you if there is no prior work. If 1st company develops something first or at least has somewhere documented creation of idea before date patent is requested, then they can present prior work for sake of defense against patents. This is how for example Cloudflare striked down blackbird legal troll, and how AV1 codec relies a lot of prior works documentation for potential patent defense in some cases.

Not anymore, e.g the US moved to first to file from first to invent in 2013.

In a first-to-file system, the right to grant a patent for a given invention lies with the first person to file a patent application for protection of that invention, regardless of the date of the actual invention.

Cloudflare did not beat Blackbird on prior art, they managed to show that the Blackbird patent itself was invalid due to it not meeting the standards that a patent should (among things it was deemed "too broad" and "too vague").

The U.S. District Court resolved the case on a motion to dismiss, meaning the court didn’t even consider the factual circumstances of the case, but looked at the face of the complaint and the language of the patent itself and determined that the claims in the patent were too vague to allow anyone to enforce it. It was so obvious to the court that Judge Chabbria’s decision was little more than a single page.

And AV1 is at the moment being licensed by at least two companies, Avanci and Sisvel, with no court case yet to contend their claims to have a patent pool that covers AV1.

[geearf]

Not anymore, e.g the US moved to first to file from first to invent in 2013.

Why did they do that?

[F.Ultra]

Why did they do that?

to streamline the process of extorting money. With first to invent there had to be lengthy and costly investigations by the USPO but with first to file the process is as simple as looking at which date the patent was filed. It was done under the "The America Invents Act".

[Anux]

We live in the real world and I couldn't care less about hypothetics.

Hehe, for a short moment I thought you may come with an argument. Should have known better. You can make a green cross in your trolling diary.

[F.Ultra]

Do you also oppose using closed source proprietary software on Linux?

Software such as games, Resolve, Lightworks, etc?

Do you oppose the existence of WINE since it's purpose is to allow people to use closed source proprietary Windows only software on Linux?

There is a world apart in playing a closed source game in a sandboexed WINE environment and using closed source components at the kernel level. Now open sourced games would ofc have been preferred (would make it that much easier to fix bugs as an example) but we all know that this won't happen so this is a practical compromise. A type of compromise that we don't accept for the kernel.

[jernej]

FYI, open source Linux HDMI 2.1 driver already exists. RK3588 BSP kernel has it, for example.

[Anux]

and it also have zero effect on patents. Your reverse engineered solution would still be infringing on the patent so it solves nothing.

Since there are no patents on the software implementation of an protocol (at least for the most countries in the world) there is no infringement possible.
Building a GPU with HDMI hardware is another thing but those are already paid for by the manufacturer and whatever software you use on it has no further effect.