Comments on: MPEG-LA’s patents exhausted by camera sale? (to be updated)

By: The Mad Hatter

The Mad Hatter — Thu, 27 May 2010 04:23:38 +0000

Another issue is the patents themselves. Most of the MPEG LA patents apparently cover some specific hardware implementations. A different hardware implementation would not be infringing, nor would a software implementation. Of course MPEG LA will claim that they’ve patented every conceivable method of doing H.264, however I strongly doubt that they are that smart.

And of course since the purchaser of the camera isn’t advised by the sales representative at the time of purchase, the purchaser is free to do whatever they want, since they didn’t sign a contract limiting their actions, since if they were buying the camera for commercial use, they wouldn’t have made the purchase if they were fully informed. MPEG LA won’t like this argument, but it has held up in court before.

Wayne

By: Ciaran

Ciaran — Sun, 09 May 2010 21:33:18 +0000

I'll have to do more reading about patent exhaustion.

About unreasonable licences, in some countries we can use a competition law defence

By: Natanael L

Natanael L — Sun, 09 May 2010 15:17:50 +0000

Interesting. This could mean that if they charge the camera manufacturer for a patent license, the customer could claim to not be affected by it since the device’ implementation of the patent has been paid for.

But it’s not that easy. The manufacturers *do* pay, but they sell *different, limited licenses* for *different purposes*.
It looks like the MPEG LA is *only* selling the right/license for the camera manufacturers to include a h264 encoder with the camera and the right to *pass on* a *personal non-commercial license* to the user of the camera.

Commercial use require one license (the one filming), any kind of commercial redistribution require one license (Youtube, blogs), and all decoders (VLC, DVD players) require one (this is paid for by the distributor of the encoder, or the end user for free programs like ffmpeg).

You could however challange this method by asking if this is a reasonable demand. AFAIK, most contries have laws against uinreasonable and unbalanced contracts and licenses. *THIS* is where you would want to attack them.

By: Ciaran

Ciaran — Fri, 07 May 2010 13:40:52 +0000

It’s a thicket of 900 patents, managed by the MPEG-LA group.

The patents cover the various MPEG video formats, and according to the OSNews article, pretty much every camera uses those formats.

By: Les

Les — Fri, 07 May 2010 12:23:11 +0000

I mean commercial use of a camera.

By: Les

Les — Fri, 07 May 2010 12:22:52 +0000

You say that some patent is involved, but you don’t identify the patent. Someone can license a camera with restrictions without there being a patent involved. What patent do you think is involved in preventing commercial use of a patent?