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Comment by Glyptodon | Hacker News Reader

So... is obligatory patent licensing subject to patent exhaustion? If so, what prevents a 3rd party factory from building chips and licensing tech, then selling chips and becoming the only party to pay royalties, and only on the cost of the chips, rather than on the final product? Is there some kind of legal differentiation of patent exhaustion based on who the purchaser is?

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>> what prevent a 3rd party factory from building chips and licensing tech ..?

Quallcom. they could dictate the licensing agreement such that the phone maker also has to license it.

Only if that's part of the standard compulsory license agreement, and if any such agreement somehow gets around patent exhaustion. Which is more or less what I was curious about.

That would have definitely improved the state of things for the likes of BluRay software playback... Not to mention most electronics where software is a huge part of interaction.

I'm hoping we see some serious reduction in patents in the next few years, including compulsory licensing models for several sectors (namely medical/pharma).

I'm not sure I see how it would have much to do with BluRay at all, at least for playback of encrypted content, as I think that's all about licensing non-patent IP and agreeing to non-patent-related contractual terms.

If the licensing were done at the component level, than any software could be used with a BR Drive... no patent royalties on top of the existing implementations in hardware... though, who knows.

It's the Patent IP that is the problem... you don't license non-patent IP.

Not a lawyer but thats what i would do too.

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