[Nouveau] [Mesa3d-dev] [radeonhd] Re: Status of s3tc patent in respect to open-source drivers and workarounds

[Luca Barbieri]

Interestingly, the post-trial judge opinion at
http://wi.findacase.com/research/wfrmDocViewer.aspx/xq/fac.%5CFDCT%5CWWI%5C2008%5C20080801_0000734.WWI.htm/qx
contains the following text:

<<
Plaintiff’s expert, Dr. Stevenson, testified that the ‘327 patent is
directed to “a special
purpose hardware component designed and optimized specifically for
high speed graphics
processing. "
The specification makes it plain that the invention does not relate to
software for graphics. As the inventors noted, such programs “are well
known in the art."
[...]
Claim 17 does not say in so many words that the method it discloses is
a rasterization
circuit operating on a floating point format, but that is what it describes.
Reading the disputed claims as disclosing hardware is not reading a
preferred embodiment in the claims; it is simply
reading the claims as the person of ordinary skill would read a patent
directed to special purpose hardware.
>>

This seems to indicate that it would be safe to implement floating
point textures/framebuffers in Mesa, as both SGI and ATI and the court
seemed to agree that the patent applies specifically to hardware.