RE: [rights] Sony Licenses InterTrust Patents

["Gandee, Brad" <Brad.Gandee@CONTENTGUARD.COM>]

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:Bob.glushko@commerceone.com]
Sent: Friday, May 24, 2002 9:48 AM
To: rights@lists.oasis-open.org
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