[amsat-bb] Re: soundcard modems for pactorIII

[Oscar Diez]

George Henry wrote:
> Perhaps you are unaware that, even after you purchase an SCS Pactor modem,
you must purchase a license to use the Pactor III protocol...  and trying to
circumvent the licensing requirement is probably illegal just about anywhere
in the world, not just in the U.S.   
> 
> You *have* heard of intellectual property rights, haven't you?


Yes, sure we have! 

But in this very particular case the owner of these rights can only enforce
them in those countries where they have got granted patents and they are
still active/maintained (periodic fees paid to local patent offices).

I am not aware of the list of countries in which they filed their PACTOR III
related patents, but since SCS is a relatively small company I would guess
they only cover the most important countries, where possible competition
could pop-up or where most of the users would be located: e.g. USA & Europe
and eventually for strategic reasons Japan, China and very selectively a few
more (= cost, cost, cost)...

It should be therefore easy for one of those very talented Russian or
Ukranian programmers to write a software PACTOR III modem variant and
publish it on a Russian web-server to make it publicly available and this
even fully legal in case there is no patent granted in Russia (which I think
is quite unlikely that it was filed there)

Then only the people downloading it in the States or Europe (or other
patented countries) for instance and starting to use it are infringing the
patents (not the programmer/distributor in this case) and SCS could
theoretically sue them. (but would become extremely complicated to manage in
real life due to various factors)
 
Actually it would be a very similar story to some of the MP3-Encoders
floating around on internet - infringing some German Fraunhofer Institute
audio compression patents in many countries.
 
Sorry for this off-topic posting, but I could not leave the bold IP rights
statement of George uncommented, hi !

Oscar, DJ0MY