[Mesa-dev] [PATCH v1 5/7] android: enable texture-float

[Matt Turner]

On Fri, Jun 16, 2017 at 6:18 AM, Emil Velikov <emil.l.velikov at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 15 June 2017 at 21:47, Robert Foss <robert.foss at collabora.com> wrote:
>> From: Rob Herring <robh at kernel.org>
>>
>> This is required by freedreno at least for GLES3 support.
>>
>> See docs/patents.txt for information about turning this on for s/w
>> renderers.
>>
> I'm inclined to agree with Tapani. We're not lawyers and with the
> patent expiring in half a year, I think we can defer this toggle to
> builders and their legal teams ;-)

It's not expiring in half a year.

ARB_texture_float references US Patent #6,650,327 [1]: which was filed
June 16 1998.

According to [2], the patent expires 20 years from the filing date,
giving an expiration of June 17 2018. So, 1 year and 1 day.

And for good measure, the patent on S3TC [3] expires Oct 2 2017. I
think we should have a party :)

[1] https://www.google.com/patents/US6650327
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Term_of_patent_in_the_United_States
[3] https://www.google.com/patents/US6775417