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draft-benham-rtcweb-vp8litigation-01
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Network Working Group D. Benham
Internet Draft J. Rosenberg
Intended status: Informational Cisco Systems
Expires: May 7, 2015
November 7, 2014
VP8 Related Litigation Status Snapshot
draft-benham-rtcweb-vp8litigation-01
Abstract
There remains a great deal of confusion in the industry about the
state of patent litigation and IPR disclosures around VP8. To
facilitate greater understanding, Duane Morris LLP drafted an
analysis that summarizes the current state of disclosures and patent
litigation based on publically available materials, and has posted a
comprehensive report on the Internet. This Internet Draft provides a
high level summary of that report. Cisco Systems requested and funded
Duane Morris to prepare this report.
Status of this Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted to IETF in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-
Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
This Internet-Draft will expire on May 7, 2015.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2014 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
Benham, et al. Expires May 7, 2015 [Page 1]
Internet-Draft VP8 related litigation status November 2014
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction...................................................2
2. VP8-related IPR Statement or Declarations......................3
2.1. IETF IPR Statements for RFC 6386..........................3
2.2. ISO/IEC IPR Declarations for Video Coding for Browsers (VCB)
...............................................................4
3. VP8 Related Litigation.........................................4
4. IANA Considerations............................................5
5. Security Considerations........................................5
6. References.....................................................5
6.1. Normative References......................................5
6.2. Informative References....................................5
Authors' Addresses................................................6
1. Introduction
There remains a great deal of confusion in the industry about the
state of patent litigation and IPR disclosures around VP8. To
facilitate greater understanding, Duane Morris LLP drafted a report
that summarizes the current state of disclosures and litigation based
on publically available materials, and has posted the analysis on the
Internet [DM].
The report is based on press releases, online reports, public court
dockets and patent registrars. Duane Morris was not involved in any
aspect of the litigation described in the report.
Cisco Systems requested and funded Duane Morris to prepare this
report.
The information contained in the Duane Morris paper [DM] is not
intended to address the merits of any party's position; it is meant
to provide an impartial summary of litigation known to relate to VP8.
For those that are intimidated by the length and legalese in the
Duane Morris report, this draft provides a high level summary. The
report covers two main areas - first, it documents the known patent
statements made against VP8 standards initiatives. The results are
summarized in Section 2. Secondly, it documents the current state of
patent litigation around VP8, summarized in Section 3.
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2. VP8-related IPR Statement or Declarations
VP8 "standards initiatives" exist in two places. The first is IETF
RFC 6386, an informational RFC that documents the VP8 bitstream
format and decoder. The second is an ISO/IEC project called Video
Coding for Browsers (VCB). The VCB project is looking to produce a
formal standard around VP8.
Both IETF and ISO/IEC ask patent holders to submit patent statements
and/or licensing declarations relevant to their respective work.
Section 2.1 summarizes patent statements against the IETF RFC for
VP8, and Section 2.2 against ISO/IEC VCB.
2.1. IETF IPR Statements for RFC 6386
+----------------------+---------------+-----------+
| IETF Statements | Type | Note/Ref |
+----------------------+---------------+-----------+
| Nokia | No License | [NOK1] |
| Ericcson | ~RAND | [ERC1] |
| Google | ~RAND-Z | [GOOG1] |
+----------------------+---------------+-----------+
Table 1 - IETF IPR Statements for VP8
IETF has received three IPR statements, enumerated in the table
above. RAND stands for "Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory" as an
umbrella for a broad range of licenses that may incur a cost but are
meant to enable practitioners to utilize the technology. RAND-Z
stands for "Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory with Zero royalty,"
which has the important addition of being free of royalty fees. "No
license" means that the patent holder is not willing to license the
technology for use in the related specification.
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2.2. ISO/IEC IPR Declarations for Video Coding for Browsers (VCB)
+----------------------+-----------------+-----------+
| ISO/IEC Declarations | Type | Note/Ref |
+----------------------+-----------------+-----------+
| Google | 1 (~RAND-Z) | [GOOG2] |
| Microsoft | 2 (~RAND) | [MSFT1] |
| Nokia | 3 (no license) | |
| Panasonic | 2 (~RAND) | Note 1 |
| Mitsubishi Electric | 2 (~RAND) | Note 1 |
| Dolby Labs | 2 (~RAND) | |
+----------------------+-----------------+-----------+
Table 2 - ISO/IEC IPR Declarations for VP8
Table 2 summarizes the state of IPR declarations against the ISO/IEC
draft standard for VCB.
Note 1: Panasonic and Mitsubishi Electric are also listed as "Primary
Licensors" under the VP8 Cross-License agreement as reported in
section B of the Duane Morris paper [DM].
3. VP8 Related Litigation
+------------------------------+-----------------+--------------+
| VP8 Related Litigation | Status | Note/Ref |
+------------------------------+-----------------+--------------+
| Nokia v HTC - Germany | Settlement $$ | Note 2 |
| Nokia v HTC - US-ITC | Settlement $$ | Note 3 |
| VSL/Max Sound v Google - US | Recently Filed | Note 4 |
| Nullify '881 - Germany | Active | by Google |
| Nullify '177 - Germany | Active | by Google |
+------------------------------+-----------------+--------------+
Table 3 - VP8 Related Litigation
Table 3 summarizes the publically available cases of litigation
against VP8. There are three cases, two of which have settled for an
undisclosed monetary amount. A third case was recently filed.
Note 2: The German court suspended the '881 Patent infringement case
to allow the invalidity case to proceed first, which happens in a
separate court. The German court dismissed the '177 Patent
infringement case. Before any decisions on the '881 Patent, Nokia
and HTC submitted a joint motion to terminate the infringement and
invalidity cases based upon their reaching a global "settlement" on
all then-pending patent litigation, which included HTC payments of an
undisclosed amount to Nokia. This motion was granted.
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Note 3: The US-ITC did not issue a ruling on the alleged infringement
or invalidity of the '211 Patent. Instead, Nokia and HTC submitted a
joint motion to terminate the investigation based upon their reaching
a global "settlement" on all then-pending patent litigation, which
included HTC payments of an undisclosed amount to Nokia. This motion
was granted, concluding the US-ITC's investigation. No active
litigation was found trying to separately nullify the '211 Patent.
Note 4: This lawsuit was recently bought against Google for the
infringement of VSL's '339 Patent in its products such as VP8, VP9,
WebM, YouTube.com, etc.
4. IANA Considerations
There are no IANA considerations for this document.
5. Security Considerations
There are no Security considerations for this document.
6. References
6.1. Normative References
6.2. Informative References
[DM] Duane Morris, LLP., "Summary of Known Patent Litigation
Related to VP8," October 27, 2014,
<http://www.duanemorris.com/memo/VP8Compilation.pdf>.
[ERC1] LM Ericsson, "Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson (publ)'s
Statement about IPR related to RFC 6386," May 14, 2014,
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/ipr/2360/>
[GOOG1] Google Inc., "Google Inc's Statement of IPR Related to
draft-bankoski-vp8-bitstream-02.," May 18, 2011,
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/ipr/1571/>
[GOOG2] Google Inc., "Patent Statement and Licensing Declaration
for ISO/IEC 14496-31," June 30, 2014,
<http://patents.iec.ch/TISS/Patents.nsf/0/CEEA7ED83FDA0FA
5C1257D4E0032B62E/$file/isoiec14996-31.pdf>
[MSFT1] Microsoft Corporation, "Patent Statement and Licensing
Declaration for ISO/IEC 14496-31," July 9, 2014,
<http://patents.iec.ch/TISS/Patents.nsf/0/18BD602F5BC9BEE
4C1257D4E003182CE/$file/ISOIEC14496-31.pdf>
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[NOK1] Nokia Corporation, "Nokia Corporation's Statement about
IPR related to RFC 6386," March 21, 2013,
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/ipr/2035/>
Authors' Addresses
David Benham
Cisco Systems, Inc.
170 W Tasman Dr.
San Jose
USA
Email: dbenham@cisco.com
Jonathan Rosenberg
Cisco
170 West Tasman Drive
San Jose, CA 95134
USA
Email: jdrosen@cisco.com
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