Privacy Digest

Sun's OMS Video codec project is a means to an end - Via Linux.com :

Sun Microsystems is setting out to create an open source, royalty-free video codec. Given the considerable head start of well-known, royalty-free video codecs like Dirac and Theora, you might ask why the world needs another. The answer, according to Sun, is the process the company will use to develop it -- starting with a full-on, careful examination of the patent situation.

I spoke with Gerard Fernando and Rob Glidden about the project, which was unveiled in April. Fernando is a senior staff engineer at Sun, and Glidden is the company's global alliance manager for TV and media.

Fernando says the video codec idea dates back to 2005, when the Open Media Commons (OMC) initiative was launched by Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz. It just took a back seat to OMC's first large-scale project, the DReaM digital rights management (DRM) system.

DRM rubs many in the open source and free software communities the wrong way, Glidden admits. But for DRM detractors, he says, the important thing about DReaM is the process that OMC used to develop it. Sun spent a full year conducting a thorough analysis of the patents and associated claims in DRM, and built DReaM on top of security systems that were either unpatented or whose patents had expired. You can read the fruits of Sun's patent examination for yourself on the OMC Web site. Regardless of how you feel about DRM, in a field dominated by patent-holding commercial interests and standards bodies that promote member products to collect royalty checks, DReaM is both open source and -- more importantly -- composed entirely of patent-unencumbered, royalty-free technology.

Submarine patents, industry FUD

By systematically examining the patent landscape, Glidden says, OMC can document the intellectual property rights asserted by other players, including valid patents to be worked around, and bad patents that need to be challenged. That strikes at the heart of one of the chief criticisms of codecs created through an open source development model, the so-called "submarine patent threat." Glidden calls that threat FUD, a scare tactic used by those collecting royalties on their own codecs to discourage the development of others.

"It's a call to inaction," he says. "When you are surrounded by a fleet of battleships all taking aim at you, the possibility of a submarine is not really a problem." The battleships in question are the patent-holding participants in royalty-charging standards groups like the ISO and the ITU. MPEG-LA exists solely for the purpose of selling licenses to MPEG codec patents, Glidden says, so of course it is going to spread the notion that competing technologies are fraught with risk and unspecified infringements. That is why OMC's development process begins by proactively challenging the allegation.

The "how can you be sure you don't infringe on someone else's patent?" question has a straightforward answer, Glidden says. You research the field, taking a conservative approach, and build up a taxonomy of the relevant work. "The fact is that these standards have known patent pools. They are listed in the documents, on the Web sites, even in the press releases."

(Read Original Article - Via Linux.com .)