[rights] An effort to clear up the confusion over CG patent claims

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

All,

 

There has been some confusion, in part based on recent inaccurate media coverage, of XrML's relationship with ContentGuard's IP claims. ContentGuard's intellectual property consists of patents describing DRM technology.  Only one of the many technologies described in the patents is a rights language.  The connection between the patented technologies and XrML is their common original source: ContentGuard.  XrML itself is not mentioned in those patents.  XrML represents an instance of a rights language (and the best one created to date).  A licensing agreement with ContentGuard is necessary for using the technology described in the patents, not for using XrML. We believe that our technology provides a superior platform upon which to build an XrML-based DRM system.  We recognize the possibility that DRM implementations using XrML may theoretically not infringe the patents.  We have also outlined much of this on our website at:

 

http://www.contentguard.com/PatentLicensing.asp 

 

Here we make it plain that there are royalty free licensing options such as "a royalty free license to distribute and/or commercialize an application that only uses XrML to attach or associate usage rights to digital works such as content or services."

Brad Gandee 
XrML Standards Evangelist
ContentGuard
6500 Rock Spring Dr., Ste 110
Bethesda, MD 20817
(p) 240-694-1220 
(c) 703-629-3414