Re: [rtcweb] Finishing up the Video Codec document, MTI (again, still, sorry)

[Roman Shpount <[e-mail]>]

David,

The other answer is "Ship H.264. Most of you are going to get sued. Good
luck settling." The risk associated with licensing H.264 is very high for
any company who is not already part of this quagmire. There are enough
problems there to hire an IPR law firm the second you look at H.264 and
hope that they are professional enough and there is enough money to
settle.  I do understand that companies who are already stuck with H.264
would not want to be exposed to any additional IPR claims. There is also a
little problem that if they implement VP8, they cannot sue any other VP8
implementers, or risk losing the VP8 IPR license.

Being a small company, we had to go through patent law suite/settlement
process several times already. Being small is not a defense against getting
sued. Some IPR holders prefer to start with going after smaller players to
create a large precedent base before going after larger targets. As far as
possibility of being sued is concerned, the free VP8 license actually looks
safer for us then the paid H.264 license. Neither offers indemnity, but, at
least, VP8 license offers reciprocity.

I do think that the current solution is the only one currently possible. If
everyone implements both, then everyone would be forced to deal with the
same problems. Hopefully, as a result, some sort of collective resolution
would be found. I doubt anybody is happy with this decision. There are a
parties who are affected by this decision who can make the situation better
for everybody. If they think this decision is so bad, they know exactly
what is required to make other options acceptable.

_____________
Roman Shpount

On Thu, Dec 4, 2014 at 2:25 PM, David Singer <[e-mail]> wrote:

>
> > On Dec 3, 2014, at 21:16 , Silvia Pfeiffer <[e-mail]>
> wrote:
> >
> > Indeed, that's why I said point 1. in David's list doesn't make sense,
> since he's talking about a small company getting sued by Nokia.
>
> So, your conclusion to my question is “Ship VP8, most of you probably
> won’t get sued. Good luck.  Try not to be too successful or your luck may
> change.”
>
> It is an answer; I don’t think it’s a good one, myself.
>
>
>
> David Singer
> Manager, Software Standards, Apple Inc.
>
> _______________________________________________
> rtcweb mailing list
> [e-mail]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/rtcweb
>