Re: Formal Objection to One vendor, One Veto

At 14:25  +1000 15/07/09, Silvia Pfeiffer wrote:
<some useful background on h.264>
>I do not think that setting up a patent pool for Theora makes any 
>sense at all:
>
>first -  the only known patents that Theora makes use of are the ones
>owned by On2 and On2 have already provided royalty-free licenses to
>these; so, it would be a very lonesome pool

actually, as has been pointed out, the only statement we can find 
seems to be a license to the software and derivative works of it, not 
to the underlying patents (and hence independent implementations)

>
>secondly - there are no royalties to distribute, which would make the
>exercise pointless

not quite.  it is possible to ask all patent holders to offer a free 
license to everyone who either confesses they have no IPR, or who 
thinks they may but is also willing to offer a free license.  This 
leaves the IPR owner wishing to charge 'out in the cold' without a 
license to all the base IPR.  I think this is what Dirac does.

It does not protect against a someone who has IPR but no intent to 
use the technology

<some perfectly fine ideas>

I also am not a lawyer, in case it is not obvious, and none of this 
should be taken as advice or legal opinion.


-- 
David Singer
Multimedia Standards, Apple Inc.

Received on Wednesday, 15 July 2009 07:08:37 UTC