Re: [rtcweb] Current H.264 licensing practice

David Benham <dabenham@gmail.com> Fri, 08 November 2013 16:14 UTC

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Date: Fri, 08 Nov 2013 08:14:10 -0800
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From: David Benham <dabenham@gmail.com>
To: Florian Weimer <fw@deneb.enyo.de>
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Cc: rtcweb@ietf.org
Subject: Re: [rtcweb] Current H.264 licensing practice
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That's not how most anti-trust friendly patent pools work; certainly not
this MPEG-LA one.   The T&Cs are what they are and related royalty
liabilities, if any, are what they are.   They do not change at the whim of
a single, major patent owner; instead several dozen must agree.  Thus, its
very difficult change them, providing lots of stability -- to look at the
bright side -- and that makes the summary document you dismissed nearly
timeless.

The T&Cs and royalty liabilities do not change per licensee (ergo, not
negotiated) .   They are not dependent on bandwidth rates either.   In this
case, the licensors also bound themselves to be unable increase royalties
by more than 10% every five years (...suspect Cisco can handle that).
  Providers
of on-demand titles and/or broadcast TV over the Internet with greater than
100K subscribers and remuneration (aka, subscription or ad revenue) are the
only service providers with royalty liabilities.   If still unconvinced,
ask for the full license doc and/or call MPEG-LA to seek further clarity.

Otherwise, let's wait for the Cisco binary license vs extrapolating from a
EULA.



On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 10:19 PM, Florian Weimer <fw@deneb.enyo.de> wrote:

> * David Benham:
>
> > Extrapolating from an EULA what one's rtcweb dev/distribution license
> > rights is likely way off base.
>
> I disagree, considering the broad overlap between EULAs from different
> vendors and very different product categories.
>
> > You can read the MPEG-LA's FAQ here ...
> > http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Documents/AVC_TermsSummary.pdf
> > Note the graphic and text for "(b) sublicenses" on pages 2 and 3.
>
> That document seems to date from 2004 or 2005, despite the metadata
> timestamp.  The Internet was quite different then.  Internet video
> conferencing existed, but was difficult to get to work.  Mobile
> Internet used EDGE, with bandwidths less 500 kbps.
>
> > The commercial royalties described are targeted at Service Providers of
> > on-demand titles and/or broadcast TV over the Internet with greater 100K
> > subscribers and great remuneration (aka, subscription or ad revenue).
> > Think the likes of Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc, using the video tag and
> > *not* the support-desk in your example or commercial, real-time
> > communications.
>
> Uhm, that's not how patent licensing works.  You need a license even
> if the patent owner has no ready-made offering that fits your
> particular needs.
>