[Patents] Hardware/software codesign

[PILCH Hartmut phm@a2e.de]

> OK where is the answer "are classical patents beneficial to society today"?

There have been some attempts to study this question and it is not clear.
A lot of articles claim that at least pharmaceutics is an area where
patents are beneficial.  It is then generalised that "technologies with a
high degree of empir[icit]y" (Technologien mit hohem Empiriegrad, i.e. a
lot of experimentation required, not abstract-logical knowledge) are the
field where patent descriptions tend to disclose something valuabel to the
public that otherwise might have stayed secret for a long time and where
they form a means of investment protection that will allow some costly R&D
projects to enter the profit zone that otherwise could not. This however
will not be true if the whole field is cluttered by lots of patents.  
Thus it is in fact unclear whether the patent system is beneficial to
society in any field today.  One effective way to push it in the
beneficial direction would be to strictly insist on "technicity" aka
"transformation of matter" aka "high degree of empiry" and stop patenting
the incremental or calculation-based (co-design-tool-based) type of
"invention".
 
> By the way, two companies are now trying to get fees from their patent on 
> MPEG
> algorithm. One is german, the second is french.

There is no such thing as a patented MPEG algorithm.
Rather, some of the basic principles of psychoacoustics which are used in
MP3 are patented.
Likewise, there is no GIF patent.

> Does somebody know where these patents have been granted?

Via the EPO in most European countries.
see http://www.mp3-licensing.com ;

-phm