[whatwg] several messages regarding Ogg in HTML5

[guido.grassel at nokia.com]

Silvia,

By definition submarine patents are patents nobody knows of, except its
owners, who might just wait until a deep pocket company has shipped a
considerable amount of products before requesting this company to
compensate them for their IP they are using in this product. W3C has no
possibility to detect or even prodect from these patents. Pls see our
position paper of the W3C Video on the Web workshop.

The other issue that might have gotten less attention in recent mailing
list and Slashdot discussion is the availability of chipsets that
support a considered codec for desktop and embedded environments.
Silicon support is essential for battery-powered devices. A pure SW
implementation of a codec will be slower and will drain the battery way
faster than a codec that relies on HW accelleration.

But lets examine the outcome of the W3C workshop.

Cheers
- Guido
 

>-----Original Message-----
>From: whatwg-bounces at lists.whatwg.org 
>[mailto:whatwg-bounces at lists.whatwg.org] On Behalf Of ext 
>Silvia Pfeiffer
>Sent: 12 December, 2007 08:24
>To: Dave Singer
>Cc: WHATWG Proposals
>Subject: Re: [whatwg] several messages regarding Ogg in HTML5
>
>On Dec 12, 2007 11:38 AM, Dave Singer <singer at apple.com> wrote:
>> Possible action:
>>
>> The members of the WG are engineers, not IPR experts. There 
>is general 
>> consensus that a solution is desirable, but also that engineers are 
>> not well placed to find it:
>> a) they are not experts in the IPR and licensing field;
>> b) many of them are discouraged by their employers from reading 
>> patents or discussing IPR.
>>
>> It's clear that the December workshop cannot be silent on this 
>> subject.  There must be recognition of the issue and evidence of at 
>> least efforts to solve it, and preferably signs of progress.
>>
>> It is probable that this is best handled in parallel with the 
>> technical work, and headed by someone 'technically neutral' and 
>> qualified, such as W3C technical and legal staff.  A good 
>start would 
>> be to:
>> a) examine the declaration, licensing, and patent expiry 
>situation for 
>> various codecs;
>> b) contact the licensing authorities for various codecs to determine 
>> their level of interest and flexibility, and possibly invite them to 
>> the December workshop.
>
>> c) analyze the open-source codecs for their risk level, and possibly 
>> seek statements from patent owners if that is deemed prudent;
>
>What was the consensus on the "what to do" question? I would 
>be quite interested to get c) undertaken and see how real the 
>submarine patent threats are. Is that a real possibility for 
>the W3C to do (I mean:
>financially speaking)?
>
>Also, if there is any potential that large patent owners could 
>make statements about the applicability of their patents to 
>these open specifications, the let's try it!
>
>Regards,
>Silvia.
>