[whatwg] Video Tag Proposal

[Eoin Kilfeather]

Forgive my ignorance, I Am Not A Lawyer, but what are the consequences
of a submarine patent on Theora and/or Vorbis? If a browser supports
it in good faith, and subsequently a troll successfully introduces a
patent challenge, would the consequence not be that the codec would
simply be dropped with the next maintenance release of the browser? In
fact a court would surely allow a reasonable time for transition. OK,
annoying that content providers need to  re-encoded in a "legal"
codec, but that is at least a work-flow susceptible to automation. I
can't see a court giving financial "damages" for infringement of a
patent which hasn't surfaced since <video> was proposed at the end of
2006.

On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 10:23 AM, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 29 March 2010 09:41, Kit Grose <kit at iqmultimedia.com.au> wrote:
>
>> Apple is at heart a hardware company. My understanding of their objections to OGG have been also largely due to a lack of hardware decoder support in their iPods/iPhones.
>
>
> No, they claimed submarine patents as their actual objection to Theora.
>
> (I'm not aware of them making an express claim of this sort regarding Vorbis.)
>
>
> - d.
>



-- 
Eoin Kilfeather
Digital Media Centre
Dublin Institute of Technology
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m. +353 87 2235928
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