Title: Sony Licenses InterTrust Patents
Bob,
"Sony certainly disagrees with some of the
statements I heard on Tuesday about no patents other than Content Guard's being
relevant to our work." ContentGuard made no such
representation in the meeting Tuesday. We stated that we believe we have
IPR that is relevant to the work of the TC and we did so in compliance with the
OASIS policies. We have said that our IP is not specific to XrML.
The patents were filed before XrML even existed. We also said that we
expect others will come forward at some point and assert their
IPR. In fact you, Bob, said at one point that there appears to be IPR
relevant to this work asserted by both ContentGuard and IBM. If someone does
come forward and it makes sense to form a patent pool to help facilitate the
implementation of the language ContentGuard would seriously consider being part
of it and stated this openness before.
Are
there other companies that hold IPR's on technology that will be relevant to the
implementation of DRM systems in general, absolutely. Is InterTrust one of
those absolutely. Are there others absolutely.
Is it
the task of this TC to resolve the IPR issues that may or may not be relevant to
anyone's implementation of a DRM system? No
As for
the issues with respect to Sony, someone should talk to Sony.
Brad
-----Original Message-----
From: Glushko, Bob
[mailto:]
Sent: Friday, May 24, 2002 9:48
AM
To:
Subject: [rights] Sony
Licenses InterTrust Patents
Folks,
I hope someone can help
me understand what's going on here; I'm certainly no patent lawyer but I can
tell that our little TC isn't going to be able to ignore the policy issues
around intellectual property. Sony certainly disagrees with some of the
statements I heard on Tuesday about no patents other than Content Guard's
being relevant to our work.
In Thursday's (May 23) Wall Street
Journal:
InterTrust Signs Sony Licensing Deal
...Sony agreed to pay InterTrust a $28.5 million fee, plus
undisclosed future royalties, to license all of InterTrust's patents for use
in Sony consumer products that distribute digital media. The patents include a
series of inventions in the field known as digital rights managementm or
DRM...
So I'd like to know:
1) What role, if any, is Sony playing in the MPEG21 activity
(or any other standards body with DRM concerns)?
2) Has Sony also licensed the Content Guard patents?
3) Has anyone suggested to Sony that they get involved in the
OASIS TC?
4) Is it appropriate that we ask the OASIS board or some other
body to help interpret this announcement and tell us what the impact is on our
work?
-bob
Robert J. Glushko, Ph.D.
Engineering
Fellow
One Market Street, 13th Floor Steuart
Tower
San Francisco CA 94105
415-644-8731
