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> "The Commission has information that AOM and its members may be imposing licensing terms (mandatory royalty-free cross licensing) on innovators that were not
by j16sdiz 4y ago
> "The Commission has information that AOM and its members may be imposing licensing terms (mandatory royalty-free cross licensing) on innovators that were not a part of AOM at the time of the creation of the AV1 technical, but whose patents are deemed essential to (its) technical specifications," read the questionnaire.
Cross licensing is the whole point for creating a free (as in beer) standard body.
There are too many existing patent in this field.
If mandatory cross-licening is seen as a problem, it will be impossible to create new video standard.
- mappu 4y agoMy reading of that statement is that there's no problem with mandatory cross-licensing. Instead it's about other companies - who did not help with AV1 development - being strong-armed into joining the cross-licensing agreement.
- JoshTriplett 4y agoCompany maintaining patent pool to strong-arm others: how dare you strong-arm us into not strong-arming others?
- josefx 4y agoCompany doing its own thing: Installing a standards conformant web browser forces us to sign over all our IP to Google.
- Someone 4y agoThe problem seems to be “but whose patents are deemed essential to (its) technical specifications” phrase. I read that as an investigation on this (real or imaginary; that’s what the investigation is about) stream of events: - AOM members created a standard for which they, together, thought owned all patents - they found out that isn’t true. Other parties hold patent(s) that are essential for the standard. - they strong-arm the holder(s) of those patent(s) to join AOM and, with it, license their patent royalty-free to the others in the group. Whether it happened I wouldn’t know, but step 3 should, IMO, be illegal. Royalty-free cross licensing is more beneficial for those who have the capital to build millions of chips implementing the standard than for smaller players. It’s like a few elephants forcing a mouse to have dinner together and splitting the bill.
- franciscop 4y agoChances are these patents, like the vast majority, are there to squeeze more money than to foster actual innovation.
- pas 4y agothat's very very likely true, but the law doesn't work that way.
- ksec 4y agoI am glad there are still some logical and reasonable reply especially relating to patents on HN. Well we are only a few years away from having patent free H.264.