"did I fire six patents, or only five?" [LWN.net]

"did I fire six patents, or only five?"

Posted Apr 26, 2011 5:33 UTC (Tue) by gmaxwell (subscriber, #30048)
In reply to: "did I fire six patents, or only five?" by cesarb
Parent article: The WebM Community Cross-License Initiative launches

I think you're reading too much into it. Actually identifying them takes work, and it's work which must be done reasonably well and for the purpose of the agreement there is absolutely no reason or advantage in actually doing that work since the goal is to make all the patents liberally available.

For many (probably most) of the parties there aren't any patents which would apply, and thats okay. The covenant is still reduces exposure even where its empty, and the lack of specific details leaves live for an aggressor maximally hard.

(Log in to post comments)

"did I fire six patents, or only five?"

Posted Apr 27, 2011 10:37 UTC (Wed) by Simetrical (guest, #53439) [Link]

. . . whereas in contrast, MPEG LA requires parties to disclose the patents, because otherwise they don't know what royalties you should be getting (if any). But for instance, the W3C also doesn't require members to disclose the patents they license according to its patent policy. They have no reason to do so.