Recherche avancée

Sur d’autres sites (16243)

• Trolls in trouble

  6 juin 2013, par Mans — Law and liberty

  Life as a patent troll is hopefully set to get more difficult. In a memo describing patent trolls as a “drain on the American economy,” the White House this week outlined a number of steps it is taking to stem this evil tide. Chiming in, the Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (where patent cases are heard) in a New York Times op-ed laments the toll patent trolling is taking on the industry, and urges judges to use powers already at their disposal to make the practice less attractive. However, while certainly a step in the right direction, these measures all fail to address the more fundamental properties of the patent system allowing trolls to exist in the first place.

  System and method for patent trolling

  Most patent trolling operations comprise the same basic elements :

  1. One or more patents with broad claims.
  2. The patents of (1) acquired by an otherwise non-practising entity (troll).
  3. The entity of (2) filing numerous lawsuits alleging infringement of the patents of (1).
  4. The lawsuits of (3) targeting end users or retailers.
  5. The lawsuits of (3) listing as plaintiffs difficult to trace shell companies.

  The recent legislative actions all take aim at the latter entries in this list. In so doing, they will no doubt cripple the trolls, but the trolls will remain alive, ready to resume their wicked ways once a new loophole is found in the system.

  To kill a patent troll

  As Judge Rader and his co-authors point out in the New York Times, “the problem stems largely from the fact that, [...] trolls have an important strategic advantage over their adversaries : they don’t make anything.” This is the heart of the troll, and this is where the blow should be struck. Our weapon shall be the mightiest judicial sword of all, the Constitution.

  The United States Constitution contains (in Article I, Section 8) the foundation for the patent system (emphasis mine) :

  The Congress shall have Power [...] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

  Patent trolls are typically not inventors. They are merely hoarders of other people’s discarded inventions, and that allowing others to reap the benefits of an inventor’s work would somehow promote progress should be a tough argument. Indeed, it is the dissociation between investment and reward which has allowed the patent trolls to rise and prosper.

  In light of the above, the solution to the troll menace is actually strikingly simple : make patents non-transferable.

  Having the inventor retain the rights to his or her inventions (works for hire still being recognised), would render the establishment of non-practising entities, which most trolls are, virtually impossible. The original purpose of patents, to protect the investment of inventors, would remain unaffected, if not strengthened, by such a change.

  Links

  • Taking on Patent Trolls to Protect American Innovation
  • Fact Sheet : White House Task Force on High-Tech Patent Issues
  • Make Patent Trolls Pay in Court
  • Constitution of the United States

• avutil/attributes_internal : Add EXTERN macro for extern+hidden

  2 mars, par Andreas Rheinhardt

  avutil/attributes_internal : Add EXTERN macro for extern+hidden
  This is inspired by the equivalent dav1d attribute introduced
  
  by Henrik Gramner in e4c4af02f3de5e6cea6f81272a2981c0fa7bae28.
  
  Also already use it to beautify declarations.
  Signed-off-by : Andreas Rheinhardt <andreas.rheinhardt@outlook.com>
  

  • [DH] libavcodec/mathops.h
  • [DH] libavcodec/me_cmp.h
  • [DH] libavcodec/vp9dsp.h
  • [DH] libavutil/attributes_internal.h

• Re-encoding vlc-created mpeg2 .ts file results in 20 second file ; AKA : multi-stream file with hidden streams

  6 septembre 2017, par insaner

  I was recording something with vlc off v4l2 (in case that makes a difference), and I just selected the first format that worked, being mpeg2 using TS container. File resulted in .ts extension, as automatically selected by vlc. When I then tried to put the video file in my video editor, it said the video was 19,884 hours long, when it should be about 6 minutes (it is 80mb in size). When I try to play it in xine, it correctly shows the duration (vlc doesn’t), and when I use ffprobe :

  [mpegts @ 0x9b2c0a0] max_analyze_duration 5000000 reached at 5000000
  
  Input #0, mpegts, from 'loopbacktestcap.ts':   Duration: N/A, start:
  
  17978.139456, bitrate: N/A   Program 1 
  
       Stream #0:0[0x44](): Video: mpeg2video (Main) ([2][0][0][0] / 0x0002), yuv420p, 640x480 [SAR 1:1 DAR 4:3], 104857 kb/s, 30 fps, 30
  
  tbr, 90k tbn, 60 tbc
  
       Stream #0:1[0x46](): Video: mpeg2video ([2][0][0][0] / 0x0002), 90k tbn

  Notice especially this line :

     Duration: N/A, start: 17978.139456, bitrate: N/A   Program 1 

  I looked it up and it seems the lack of duration has to do with the container. But I have tried a few things to reencode (I tried -vcodec copy, mpeg2, libx264...) and all I can get is 20 second files of 1.1mb - 1.8mb.

  So how can I reencode this file so the duration appears, and I get the full 6 minutes, instead of just the first 20 seconds ?