The problem comes in when patents have the effect of walling off an entire subfield of computer science from the perspective of the commercial R&D world.
Classic cases in point are IBM's patent on arithmetic encoding, which rendered that entire class of algorithms radioactive in the 1980s-1990s era, and the original Lempel-Ziv patent claims dating back to 1978.
We are most certainly not better off as a society because we granted decade+ monopolies on those claims, and I see no reason to think any differently of MPEG.
Classic cases in point are IBM's patent on arithmetic encoding, which rendered that entire class of algorithms radioactive in the 1980s-1990s era, and the original Lempel-Ziv patent claims dating back to 1978.
We are most certainly not better off as a society because we granted decade+ monopolies on those claims, and I see no reason to think any differently of MPEG.