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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, January 03 2013 @ 10:10 AM EST |
In other words, patent pool essential patents are only essential
for the extortion of money from companies that want to implement world
standards.
A patent pool is a tool.
Like any tool, it can
used and misused.
Extortion is a word used to identify
misuse.
That is the point I disagree: it's not just misuse. There's
valid use occurring as well.
RAS[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: retiarius on Sunday, January 06 2013 @ 12:15 AM EST |
Regarding "extortion" of patent pools -- although the Supremes
already ruled that MPEG-LA passed the antitrust swimming costume test,
in this case (Google v. Microsoft via Motorola) they all deserve each other.
To wit:
Google as presumptive assignee of Moto's patents (wherein the assignee
inherits all rights of the original patent owner, is surely thinking
"if Motorola" as H.264 holdout can wear the "troll" hat why
can't we?)
Microsoft like Apple are in the pools as both consumer and producer,
but has tried Google's tricks before and attempted to market something
non-H.264 until that failed.
Maybe Google is hoping for a Lucent-Alcatel type windfall to keep
the Patent-Attorneys-Full-Employment act going...
It's seems that if a company is sufficiently large, their legal departments
can talk out of both sides of their mouth simultaneously.
Really, is licensing H.264 all that onerous? I think any individual holdout
(be Lucent or Moto or Jane Doe) is more dangerous than the larger entity
here, in this case MPEG-LA, Mafia-like though they may be. If Apple and
Microsoft can afford it, so can Google. Honor among thieves will out,
but surely these moldy old compression patents must be about to expire.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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