Anti-Piracy Patents for Cell Phones Pooled

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

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From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
Reply-To: <dewayne () warpspeed com>
Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2005 10:07:18 -0800
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Anti-Piracy Patents for Cell Phones Pooled

Anti-Piracy Patents for Cell Phones Pooled
Thu Jan 6, 2005 12:22 AM ET
<http://olympics.reuters.com/audi/newsArticle.jhtml?
type=technologyNews&storyID=7250310>

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A film and music technology firm
said on Thursday it had grouped together all the
patents needed to protect digital film and music on
mobile phones against piracy, the first time digital
rights have been pooled.

MPEG LA, which already offers all essential patents
for the international digital video compression
standard known as MPEG-2, said five companies had
pooled essential anti-piracy patents for a standard
set by the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA), an organization
of handset makers and mobile telecoms operators.

Mobile phone makers which implement the technology
into their handsets can protect songs, software and
other digital content against forwarding, or they can
allow consumers to use or copy the material under
certain conditions.

The standard is expected to promote the availability
of digital content for mobile phones. Music, film and
software companies have been reluctant to make their
catalogs available for mobile phone consumption.

The pooling of the anti-piracy and content control
technology will make it easier for handset makers and
mobile operators to start using the technology,
because they can buy the rights to all essential
patents in one place, MPEG LA said.

"They will know what the price is, so there is no
uncertainty when they make their business plans," said
MPEG LA's Vice President for Licensing, Larry Horn.

Handset makers will pay $1 to include OMA's Digital
Rights Management (DRM) 1.0 standard into a mobile
phone. Content owners which want to protect their
material with OMA DRM, will pay royalties representing
one percent of the consumer selling price of their
service.

The five companies are InterTrust and ContentGuard,
two very small but powerful DRM companies, plus
consumer electronics giants Sony Corp and Matsushita
Electric Industrial Co Ltd from Japan, and Dutch
Philips Electronics.

The pooling should also make clear that everyone who
uses OMA's DRM needs to pay royalties. ContentGuard
told Reuters in October that OMA had not informed its
members properly and that many handset makers thought
the anti-piracy standard was free.

[snip]


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