Is it legal to implement the SF2 format?
I'm thinking of creating an iOS app that can read SoundFonts, so I'm trying to implement an SF2 parser. I found the specification here, but this part caught my eye:
> AUTHORS OF THIS SPECIFICATION DISCLAIM ALL LIABILITY, INCLUDING LIABILITY FOR
> INFRINGEMENT OF PROPRIETARY RIGHTS, RELATING TO IMPLEMENTATION OF INFORMATION IN THIS
> SPECIFICATION. AUTHORS OF THIS SPECIFICATION ALSO DO NOT WARRANT OR REPRESENT THAT
> SUCH IMPLEMENTATION (S) WILL NOT INFRINGE ON SUCH RIGHTS.
Is this "just" standard legalese or does implementing the format actually constitute copyright/patent infringement? If so, how are programs like MuseScore allowed to exist? Do they all have a license? Is there some other, untainted specification that I'm not aware of?
I searched for an answer to this, but couldn't find anything -- information on the format in general seems sparse. Hoping someone here can answer.
Comments
To my knowledge, this is pretty standard legal speak by the team from Creative back in those days. Meaning that if someone had created a patent on a specific implementation of that standard in their product Creative can't guarantee you that by implementing their standard in a different product you won't violate that other party's patent. And that if that happens to be the case, that Creative can't be held liable for such an infringement.
The specification itself is "untainted".
Given the age of the standard and the many available software implementations for it (some partial examples from creative labs themselves) you should be in no infringements at all when implementing this standard. To my knowledge, nor MuseScore nor FluidSynth has infringed anything else with their implementation.
Check archive.org for the original pages from Creative where this spec (and related documentation) can be found.
In reply to To my knowledge, this is… by jeetee
Great, thanks so much!