Re: [W3C Web and TV IG] Adaptive streaming MPEG DASH liaison

Dear Steve,

On 2011-03-19, at 10:54 , Steve Lhomme wrote:

> [...]
> What are the guarantees that this cannot happen ? Is the MPEG, 3GPP
> and/or W3C responsible for doing a deep patent search to make sure it
> can be declared royalty free ?

There's no guarantees in life, and no patent search, whatever the depth, will ensure you're safe from anything.

My personal experience with patent pools is this: If someone comes along later, claiming that he had patents in the tech, the patent pool will act as a mediator. In practice this comes down to the new kid on the block being added to the patent pool. I have never seen retro-active claims on pooled patents in such a situation. And on what grounds would you want to claim them? The licensees have demonstrated their good intentions by getting a licence from the pool. So it is their fault not having responded to the patent pool's call for patent holders back then. So it is safer than any patent research in that you as licensee have documented that you don't want to cheat on anyone; hence in practice you should be safe from retro-active claims.

And getting a licence does not inevitably mean that you have to pay sth. TV-Anytime for instance (see my recent email "RF-ness") has a licence attached, but it is free of charge as long as you don't run a pay service with it.

> Side Note: shouldn't it be a service provided by patent offices anyway ?

Haha. Good one. ;-) Patent offices are designed to deal with patent lawyers. Not mere mortals like us.


Cheers,

  --alex

Received on Friday, 1 April 2011 15:59:23 UTC