Digital Video Patent Thicket

We've talked about the emerging threat of patents covering MPEG-4 recently, but today there is a fascinating discussion regarding MPEG-2 Patent Thickets and their impact on software DVD players, consumer choice, and vendor freedom over at The Technology Liberation Front, with the article coming to the logical conclusion that:

In any event, the best solution is to repeal software patents, which impede innovation in this and many other software categories.

This post was a followup to another fascinating discussion at TLF regarding Linux DVD players.