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

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

Posted Apr 25, 2011 20:09 UTC (Mon) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625)
Parent article: The WebM Community Cross-License Initiative launches

Interesting twist on the TERM SHEET page: "Persons joining the WebM Community Cross-License will not be required to identify Covered Patents."

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

Posted Apr 25, 2011 23:20 UTC (Mon) by cesarb (subscriber, #6266) [Link] (2 responses)

I can think of at least three reasons for that.

One reason would be to hide that there are no "Covered Patents". If what On2 always claimed about all the patents on VP8 belonging to them is true, then the only member on that list which would have any "Covered Patents" would be Google (and, by the way, is there a list of Google's VP8 patents anywhere?).

Another reason would be to hide that there *are* "Covered Patents". From what I have heard, On2 always claimed that all the VP8 patents belong to them; if one of the other members has a patent which might apply to VP8, that member might want to hide the fact so as to not "rock the boat".

And another reason, probably the real one, would be that a patent *might* apply to VP8, or it *might not*. Not having to identify the patents allows them to remain in that superposition of states indefinitely, while having to identify the patents would force them to collapse prematurely into whether it is a "Covered Patent" or not.

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

Posted Apr 26, 2011 5:33 UTC (Tue) by gmaxwell (guest, #30048) [Link] (1 responses)

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.

"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.