I don't know if that entirely true..
In Lucent Technologies, Inc. v. Gateway, Inc. for example:
"Lucent had not made any representations that its patents would be
licensed through MPEG LA; to the contrary, Defendants such as Gateway
were informed that they would need a license directly from Lucent.
Moreover, the MPEG LA sublicensee agreement explicitly warns that the
MPEG LA pool *does not necessarily include all the patents necessary to
practice the technology and that sublicensee signs the agreement aware
of such risks*. (Blackburn Dec. Ex. 20 ยงยง 4.2, 4.3.)"
I am not an "expert" who can claim anything to any certainty when it
comes to submarine patents? ...My observation of the litigation history
shows theora is "safer" to implement than mpeg la stuff.
metavid.ucsc.ed/blog has some more "observations" to that end ;)
michael dale
metavid.org
Jerason Banes wrote:
If by "Corporate Blessed", you mean codecs like H.264, there's a very
simple answer to that. Nokia and Apple pay licensing fees to a company
called MPEG LA. MPEG LA indemnifies Nokia and Apple from patent
lawsuits over the use of MPEG-related codecs. Should anyone come
forward with a new patent, the MPEG LA will litigate the matter and/or
come to an agreement with the patent holder to license the patent on
behalf of their member companies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264#Patent_licensing
Thanks,
Jerason Banes
On Dec 12, 2007 7:15 AM, Joseph Daniel Zukiger <
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> wrote:
What guarantees do Apple, Nokia, et. al. offer that
their corporate-blessed containers/formats/codecs are
free from threat for (ergo) the rest of us? Are they
willing to make binding agreements to go to bat for
_us_ in court?
