[RTW] Known encumberances != exhaustive list of encumberances (was Gateways and does anyone think "H.264 for ever"?)
Adam Roach
adam at nostrum.com
Fri Jan 7 20:33:02 CET 2011
On 1/7/11 12:23 PM, David Singer wrote:
> Your list is a start, but it also needs to consider the availability
> of acceleration and hardware support (maybe that's part of your first
> bullet), and (alas) IPR risk.
You've brought up IPR risk a couple of times now, with the implication
that a codec with known IPR entanglements is somehow safer than a codec
without. This is a fallacy that we need to dispense with.
The argument with purportedly "IPR Free" technologies is that as-yet
unidentified patents may apply, and be asserted at a later date. This is
true.
However, the identification of one or more patents that *do* apply to a
technology does nothing to mitigate the risk that additional as-yet
unidentified patents may also apply to it. If you have a set of unknown
size, finding some elements in the set does nothing to prove that all
the elements have been found. All you know is that the set is not empty
(which, in this case, is a drawback).
This shouldn't be news to anyone with even a passing familiarity with
the situation. As I'm certain you are aware, the MPEG-LA licensing pool
agreement for H.264 explicitly calls out these potentially unknown
patents as a risk, and warns licensees that dealing with any resultant
problems is the licensees' problem, not MPEG-LAs.
In other words: it is every bit as likely that an entity will assert a
previously unidentified, valid patent against H.264 as it is that a
company will assert such a patent against Theora or VP8. Implications to
the contrary are propaganda.
/a
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