Forgive my ignorance, I Am Not A Lawyer, but what are the consequences of a submarine patent on Theora and/or Vorbis? If a browser supports it in good faith, and subsequently a troll successfully introduces a patent challenge, would the consequence not be that the codec would simply be dropped with the next maintenance release of the browser? In fact a court would surely allow a reasonable time for transition. OK, annoying that content providers need to re-encoded in a "legal" codec, but that is at least a work-flow susceptible to automation. I can't see a court giving financial "damages" for infringement of a patent which hasn't surfaced since <video> was proposed at the end of 2006.
On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 10:23 AM, David Gerard <dger...@gmail.com> wrote: > On 29 March 2010 09:41, Kit Grose <k...@iqmultimedia.com.au> wrote: > >> Apple is at heart a hardware company. My understanding of their objections >> to OGG have been also largely due to a lack of hardware decoder support in >> their iPods/iPhones. > > > No, they claimed submarine patents as their actual objection to Theora. > > (I'm not aware of them making an express claim of this sort regarding Vorbis.) > > > - d. > -- Eoin Kilfeather Digital Media Centre Dublin Institute of Technology Aungier Street Dublin 2 m. +353 87 2235928 skype:ekilfeather