[RTW] Known encumberances != exhaustive list of encumberances (was Gateways and does anyone think "H.264 for ever"?)

[Adam Roach]

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