[noname120]

What3words is patented[1]. If you compare the explanation of their free implementation[2] with the claims section of the patent, it seems very possible that it breaches the patent. In particular, the equations that are described in claim number 7 of the patent are exactly the same as in their explanations.

I'm not a lawyer so I can't talk about whether it can be enforced in practice. But still, the fact that this open-source implementation doesn't reference the patent anywhere suggests that they didn't consider the legal implications properly.

[1] https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2014170646A1/fr?oq=WO%2f...

[2] https://whatfreewords.org/about.html

[rahimnathwani]

IANAL, and may be wrong about how US patent law works but AIUI:

- A patent isn't infringed unless an independent claim is infringed

- Claim #7 (the one with the equations) is a dependent claim (dependent on claim #1, which is independent)

The key questions seem to be:

- whether claim #1 is being infringed, and

- whether the patent is valid

[noname120]

This is exactly correct. The point about the formulas was meant as an illustrative example about the fact that the patent might well apply rather than an argumentative one.

[greglindahl]

It's a good choice of example... of why it might be invalid due to Alice.

[freeone3000]

It's open source. Good luck enforcing patent claims against something that can be copied endlessly for free. Ask how that turned out against ffmpeg.

[theamk]

Eh, if they pull all apps which use that library from apple's and google's app stores, that would be enough to make it useless.

[coolspot]

Codec IP owners usually grant royalty-free rights to software video players.

They make money licensing IP to hardware manufacturers.

[freeone3000]

MPEG-LA does not. https://www.mpegla.com/programs/avc-h-264/ is their license scheme - while they allow a certain threshold below which cutoff isn't required, there's a lot of companies (such as Blizzard Entertainment!) whose primary distributed product is solely for video playback. H.264 requires a license for personal, at-home playback of encoded files. You have such a license if you have a Windows OS, an Apple OS, if you're using Chrome, or if you use a set-top box, or other "single-use" device which can play back H.264. You do not have such a license on linux with mplayer.

[bigiain]

The FAQ strongly hints that they know there'll be some sort of legal blowback:

"Before WhatFreeWords existed, another group had released an open-source implementation of What3Words and published it on GitHub, and GitHub removed the repository after receiving a DMCA takedown notice from the What3Words company. It is likely that similar action would be taken against a WhatFreeWords repository on GitHub."

and:

"We prefer to remain anonymous. The What3Words company has shown that they will attempt to cause problems for people distributing open-source implementations of the What3Words geocoding system, so it is easier if we are anonymous."

[harry-wood]

Turns out that in order to evade DMCA action, they needed to do more than not being on github. As of yesterday I think..

"WhatFreeWords is currently unavailable due to DMCA action from the What3Words company"