No. The claim that there are no patents in Germany on this stuff is common internet misinformation(*). There are a great many coding patents from Fraunhofer all around the world, including in Europe.
Presumably because it's much easier to get injunctive relief in Germany I've seen more codec related litigation there than anywhere else.
(*) Like many pieces of misinformation it has its roots in a seed of truth: Particularly between 1998 (State Street) and 2014 (CLS v Alice) the case law in the US supported software patents.
The real confusion is that "Software patents" is an obscure term of art which refers to patents specifically on software methods without any reference to a physical machine or good.
When non-patent-attorneys say "software patents" they mean something more like "something I could infringe by writing software". But clever drafting allows people to write patents that software causes an infringement of without it technically being a "software patent": The patent's claims language will say something like "A recorded media containing instructions..." or "A microprocessor programmed to...". And this has been true in the US and Europe through the whole span.
Which is why there is an awful lot of patent action impacting software in places where "software patents" don't exist, such as the US (as of right now) and Europe.
>The patents were held to be invalid, because the claims were drawn to an abstract idea, and implementing those claims on a computer was not enough to transform that abstract idea into patentable subject matter.
You can absolutely patent software in Europe. Sorry. It's a common misconception that you can't. There's a stupid dance you have to do so it isn't technically "software" that you're patenting... but really it is.
From my understanding you can patent things supported by software, but not the software itself. A physical digital music player with a fancy software audio compression is patentable, but not the algorithm on its own.
> As a result, the widespread belief in the non-patentability of software is simply a misconception, partly as a result of insufficient training of innovators and the lobbying activities of certain interested parties.
> The European Patent Convention states that software is not patentable. But laws are always interpreted by courts, and in this case interpretations of the law differ. So the European Patents Office (EPO) grants software patents by declaring them as "computer implemented inventions".
Yes I find the EPO to be a bit shady by accepting software patents, and the fees, when the patents aren’t enforceable by law. I’m not a lawyer but I known how to read and I would ignore the patents trolls and I consider the risk to lose in court very low. The day something like the VideoLan association loses a trial, I may reconsider my position.
True, it hasn’t stopped hobbyists from using x264, ffmpeg or VLC in the past but that would probably prevent companies in some markets to use this audio format.