Re: [rtcweb] Proposal for H.263 baseline codec

[Marshall Eubanks <[e-mail]>]

On Thu, Apr 19, 2012 at 3:15 AM, Randell Jesup <[e-mail]> wrote:
> On 3/29/2012 1:12 PM, Silvia Pfeiffer wrote:
>>
>> Very interesting discussion. Out of personal curiosity, I have some
>> questions inline.
>>
>> On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 7:20 AM, Stephan Wenger<[e-mail]>  wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> The most commonly cited timeline for a widely in use technology to be
>>> "save" from a patent viewpoint, based on equitable defenses such as
>>> laches
>>> (in the US) is six years.
>>
>>
>> Very interesting to know the usually used limit on the number of
>> years. IIUC that would make Speex, Vorbis and Theora "save" codecs,
>> since they were released in 2003, 2000, and 2004 respectively?
>
>
> IANAL:  No, since the defense (with some notable exceptions) is by a
> specific person against delayed assertion of a suit against them, so someone
> using Speex for example could not use that defense for circa 6 years after
> they began using it.  Note that publication of a spec doesn't violate a
> patent (though using it may).  In practice the defense might be even more
> limited, for example if the infringer made very limited use of the patent
> for years such that the owner didn't even know they were infringing; it's
> possible the court might start the clock when the owner knew or could/should
> have known of the infringement.
>

I found a fairly detailed analysis of the defense of laches in patent
cases starting at page 27 of this

http://www.fdml.com/defenses.pdf

Reading this dense legal reasoning makes me very nervous about relying
on any of this for any IETF decision. Engineers should not
pretend they are lawyers.

Regards
Marshall

>
> --
> Randell Jesup
> [e-mail]
>
> _______________________________________________
> rtcweb mailing list
> [e-mail]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/rtcweb