Vorbis development, status & patent issues, PART 2 - Technical discussion Options

[Gabriel]

Moderator comment
Currently the Vorbis patent issue covers these threads:
Vorbis development, status & patent issues PART 1 - NON-technical discussion
Vorbis development, status & patent issues PART 2 - Technical discussion (This thread)
/Moderator comment

By looking at this:
http://www.xiph.org/archives/vorbis-dev/20...2/index.html#83
it seems that Xiph (at least in 2000) was open to the idea of disclosing the patent research.
Is this position changed now, or does it still stand?

[Ivan Dimkovic]

All in all, this is how I perceive the picture... sorta "thinking loud":

Xiph - "We claim Ogg Vorbis is patent free (on the website)"

Q1: "Can you guarantee you are free of patents"

Xiph - "No, nobody can - and you need a expensive lawyer opinion for that"

Q2: "Ok, so how can you claim "patent free" on the website without applying the same logic?"

Xiph - "We are about to define "patent free" after the meeting" (analogy with RMS goes here... )

(still, while not defined what actually is, claim "patent free" is key marketing argument for years and the way to disqualify some better codecs as "codecs with patent issues" like somebody said on this forum - see the problem?)

<personal opinion> Maybe it is better to call Vorbis "license free" or "royalty free" since both statements are true even if some patents are infringed </personal opinion>

Q3: "What is the Xiph's stand on US 5,214,742?"

Xiph: "We cannot comment, you need a professional lawyer opinion"

Q4: "But in-depth technical discussion is presented on HA... c"

Xiph: "We said enough... case closed... meeting moves to... next topic"


IMHO, one thing is somewhat unclear - Xiph does not want to go into any technical discussion about Vorbis implementation and current patent situation in US and EU, and especially couple of patents which raise eyebrows - some kind of "no - patent describes THIS WAY, and we did THAT WAY" discussion would be welcome - but unfortunately hard to expect. I understand that stand, probably every Monty's word has very big legal weight since he is the leader and founder of Xiph - and he probably likes to hear lawyer's opinion before he says something about Ogg in public (but somehow I think technical aspects are of no lawyer's concern)

So, let's wait for the new definition of "patent free" in Vorbis - and, maybe some official lawyer's opinion if it is allowed to be said in public

This post has been edited by Ivan Dimkovic: Oct 6 2003, 08:33