Re: [rtcweb] Input to Video Codec Selection

[Harald Alvestrand <[e-mail]>]

On 03/03/2013 04:38 PM, Cullen Jennings wrote:
> Harald,
>
> The IPR disclosure says RF but the grant at webm pages is not RF. It includes
>
>   If You or your agent or exclusive licensee institute or order or agree to the institution of patent litigation against any entity (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that any implementation of this specification constitutes direct or contributory patent infringement, or inducement of patent infringement, then any rights granted to You under the License for this specification shall terminate as of the date such litigation is filed.
>
> So there seems to be some inconsistency here or perhaps the IPR grand on IETF page was just much broader than the one on webm page. Can you help make sure the IPR disclosure is correct? I also had the idea that IETF preferred if Google actually disclosed patents that google control as wells other that are known on VP8 in the disclosure.

Cullen, in what way is the WEBM page grant not an RF grant (or more 
precisely: "under a royalty-free and otherwise reasonable and 
non-discriminatory license", which is the precise language used in RFC 
3979 section 6.5)?
I can't remember the last time I saw a royalty-free license commitment 
without a defensive suspension clause.

Re patent numbers:

I've heard Scott Bradner claim that a defensive-suspension filing is not 
covered by the "blanket license" rule in section 6.4.3 of RFC 3979, but 
the first time I heard that was at the RTCWEB meeting, and I objected to 
the claim - I was listening most carefully when we wrote RFC 3979 in the 
IPR working group; my belief at the time we filed this statement was 
that since it's a blanket RF license, it did not require listing 
specific patent numbers. (As you know, listing specific patent numbers 
can be a chore requiring a fair amount of human judgment = lawyer and 
engineer time.

I believe the IETF IPR rules were intended to be biased towards making 
life easy for people willing to do RF licenses; I'd certainly not want 
to make life for those people harder.