Re: [codec] Authors and disclosures, regarding Last Call: <draft-ietf-codec-opus-12.txt>

["Kevin P. Fleming" <[e-mail]>]

On 05/02/2012 08:39 AM, Jean-Marc Valin wrote:
>
>
> On 12-05-02 08:44 AM, Kevin P. Fleming wrote:
>> While it's true that SILK was available at that time, it was only
>> available in binary form embedded inside products delivered by Skype,
>> and those products heavily obscure and encrypt their behavior. It seems
>> unlikely that anyone who had IPR in any of its methods would have been
>> able to determine that SILK was potentially infringing before its source
>> code was made available. I would consider the 'first public disclosure'
>> date to be the first time the source code was published.
>
> As far as I can tell, the actual source code was released as open source
> in March 2010, though it may have been available before that to
> developers willing to sign some agreement. Also, fortunately prior art
> gets established based on the time Silk was available even in obfuscated
> form.

In the legal sense that is absolutely true, sure. The OP's comment 
though was that he wasn't sure whether potential IPR holders had had 
enough time to determine whether SILK/OPUS may be infringing on their 
IPR. In that case, the extra year of SILK availability in binary-only 
obfuscated form likely won't make much difference.

Also, we were one of the licensees of SILK prior to the source code 
publication (although we never released any products using it) and the 
codec was only offered to us in binary form.

-- 
Kevin P. Fleming
Digium, Inc. | Director of Software Technologies
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