No One-Stop-Shops for Licensing Technology for Innovations [LWN.net]

No One-Stop-Shops for Licensing Technology for Innovations

Posted Apr 4, 2013 3:43 UTC (Thu) by ayers (guest, #53541)
Parent article: The VP8 wars heat up ... again

It clearly shows that the MPEG LA is indeed not the one-stop-shop it claims to be ["Benefits for Patent Users: ... Averting legal costs and concerns"]. Not that there was any doubt in my mind before, but many of proponent of the existing defacto standards liked to invoke the impression, that everything is fine once the MPEG LA license was granted. It now seams more reasonable to argue, that the MGPEG LA offers a service that is fraudulently offering to solve a problem, that wouldn't exist without it or it's kind.

One consolation I see in these developments, is that it clearly shows in a real world instance, how patents are stifling innovation like WebRTC and that these events will hopefully have lawmakers (re)consider more deeply the prospect of abolishing patents on software.

to post comments

No One-Stop-Shops for Licensing Technology for Innovations

Posted Apr 4, 2013 14:01 UTC (Thu) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link] (3 responses)

The article notes that only eleven of twelve companies agreed to be part of the deal. If the twelfth was Nokia, as seems likely, then MPEG-LA can still claim to be a one-stop shop for patent licensing. The normal MPEG-LA licensing deal includes all of the members while Google's did not.

No One-Stop-Shops for Licensing Technology for Innovations

Posted Apr 4, 2013 14:39 UTC (Thu) by ayers (guest, #53541) [Link] (2 responses)

Nokia is not listed as one of the AVC/H.264 licensors so it seems fair to assume that this patent is not covered by the MPEG LA license.

No One-Stop-Shops for Licensing Technology for Innovations

Posted Apr 4, 2013 14:52 UTC (Thu) by n8willis (subscriber, #43041) [Link] (1 responses)

That is true, but an important detail is that the MPEG-LA VP8 "call for patents" was an open one; responding was not limited to folks already asserting H.264 patents.

Nate

No One-Stop-Shops for Licensing Technology for Innovations

Posted Apr 4, 2013 15:17 UTC (Thu) by ayers (guest, #53541) [Link]

Indeed, fair point. So indeed it does seem likely, that Nokia may have been one of the twelve and the MPEG LA failed to create their their One-Stop-Shop for VP8(+1) and simply offered a deal for the remaining subset of companies that followed their call.

BTW: Thank you very much for this article!