[M4IF Discuss] Re: hourly usage fee for MPEG4

[Alexandros Eleftheriadis]

: Date: Sun, 24 Feb 2024 09:20:04 -0500
: To: Yuval Fisher <yuval   envivio.com>
: From: Craig Birkmaier <craig   pcube.com>
: Subject: Re: [M4IF Discuss] hourly usage fee for MPEG4
: Cc: olivier.avaro   rd.francetelecom.com, discuss   lists.m4if.org

[...]
: Patents are supposed to encourage the proliferation of technology. 
: They should not be used to restrict access to a technology, or to 
: protect the marketplace interests of the IPR holder(s), although this 
: has happened frequently in the past century.

[...]
(As a long-time MPEG-4 co-conspirator of yesteryear, I've been following
these discussions with great interest!)
Craig, a small correction -- the purpose of patent law (at least in the
US) is to 1) make the technology public, and 2) protect the rights of
the inventor for a set number of years so that he can profit from it.
The first objective ensures that the technology will not be hidden away
as a trade secret, and will thus help others learn from it and,
hopefully, even allow them to create something better in the future. The
second objective ensures that the marketplace interests of the IPR
holder *are* protected. Any patent lawyer should be able to confirm
that.
The MPEG picture is different from individual inventions though. MPEG
essentially bestows value to a particular technology by adoption into
the standard, in return for fair and non-discriminatory licensing.
However, the value is bestowed *before* the terms of the licensing are
established. That leaves the license holders free to come up with
whatever they thing is fair and non-discriminatory. (This, btw, includes
things that can kill the standard in favor of other IPR.)
MPEG-2 IPR generates a lot of revenue and may have made people believe
that this is easily repeatable. Not only that: the licensing terms
appear to be inspired by pre-2000 revenue sharing dreams rather than
market realities... 
The JVT effort is commendable and a very interesting experiment. In the
absense of that, in the future the business terms should maybe be
established alongside the technology. That may ensure that 'realistic'
becomes part of 'fair' and 'non-discriminatory' :-)
--
Alex Eleftheriadis
eleft   ee.columbia.edu
(212) 854-8670