Network Working Group D. Benham Internet Draft J. Rosenberg Intended status: Informational Cisco Systems Expires: May 7, 2015 November 7, 2014 VP8 Related Litigation Status Snapshot draft-benham-rtcweb-vp8litigation-01 Abstract There remains a great deal of confusion in the industry about the state of patent litigation and IPR disclosures around VP8. To facilitate greater understanding, Duane Morris LLP drafted a paper that summarizes the current state of disclosures and patent litigation based on publically available materials, and has posted a comprehensive report on the Internet. This Internet Draft provides a high level summary of that report. Cisco Systems requested and funded Duane Morris to prepare this report. Status of this Memo This Internet-Draft is submitted to IETF in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet- Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." This Internet-Draft will expire on May 7, 2015. Copyright Notice Copyright (c) 2014 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved. This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of Benham, et al. Expires May 7, 2015 [Page 1] Internet-Draft VP8 related litigation status November 2014 the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Simplified BSD License. Table of Contents 1. Introduction...................................................2 2. VP8-related IPR Statement or Declarations......................3 2.1. IETF IPR Statements for RFC 6386..........................3 2.2. ISO/IEC IPR Declarations for Video Coding for Browsers (VCB) ...............................................................4 3. VP8 Related Litigation.........................................4 4. IANA Considerations............................................5 5. Security Considerations........................................5 6. References.....................................................5 6.1. Normative References......................................5 6.2. Informative References....................................5 Authors' Addresses................................................6 1. Introduction There remains a great deal of confusion in the industry about the state of patent litigation and IPR disclosures around VP8. To facilitate greater understanding, Duane Morris LLP drafted a report that summarizes the current state of disclosures and litigation based on publically available materials, and has posted the analysis on the Internet [DM]. The report is based on press releases, online reports, public court dockets and patent registrars. Duane Morris was not involved in any aspect of the litigation described in the report. Cisco Systems requested and funded Duane Morris to prepare this report. The information contained in the Duane Morris paper [DM] is not intended to address the merits of any party's position; it is meant to provide an impartial summary of litigation known to relate to VP8. For those that are intimidated by the length and legalese in the Duane Morris report, this draft provides a high level summary. The report covers two main areas - first, it documents the known patent statements made against VP8 standards initiatives. The results are summarized in Section 2. Secondly, it documents the current state of patent litigation around VP8, summarized in Section 3. Benham, et al. Expires May 7, 2015 [Page 2] Internet-Draft VP8 related litigation status November 2014 2. VP8-related IPR Statement or Declarations VP8 "standards initiatives" exist in two places. The first is IETF RFC 6386, an informational RFC that documents the VP8 bitstream format and decoder. The second is an ISO/IEC project called Video Coding for Browsers (VCB). The VCB project is looking to produce a formal standard around VP8. Both IETF and ISO/IEC ask patent holders to submit patent statements and/or licensing declarations relevant to their respective work. Section 2.1 summarizes patent statements against the IETF RFC for VP8, and Section 2.2 against ISO/IEC VCB. 2.1. IETF IPR Statements for RFC 6386 +----------------------+---------------+-----------+ | IETF Statements | Type | Note/Ref | +----------------------+---------------+-----------+ | Nokia | No License | [NOK1] | | Ericcson | ~RAND | [ERC1] | | Google | ~RAND-Z | [GOOG1] | +----------------------+---------------+-----------+ Table 1 - IETF IPR Statements for VP8 IETF has received three IPR statements, enumerated in the table above. RAND stands for "Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory" as an umbrella for a broad range of licenses that may incur a cost but are meant to enable practitioners to utilize the technology. RAND-Z stands for "Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory with Zero royalty," which has the important addition of being free of royalty fees. "No license" means that the patent holder is not willing to license the technology for use in the related specification. Benham, et al. Expires May 7, 2015 [Page 3] Internet-Draft VP8 related litigation status November 2014 2.2. ISO/IEC IPR Declarations for Video Coding for Browsers (VCB) +----------------------+-----------------+-----------+ | ISO/IEC Declarations | Type | Note/Ref | +----------------------+-----------------+-----------+ | Google | 1 (~RAND-Z) | [GOOG2] | | Microsoft | 2 (~RAND) | [MSFT1] | | Nokia | 3 (no license) | | | Panasonic | 2 (~RAND) | Note 1 | | Mitsubishi Electric | 2 (~RAND) | Note 1 | | Dolby Labs | 2 (~RAND) | | +----------------------+-----------------+-----------+ Table 2 - ISO/IEC IPR Declarations for VP8 Table 2 summarizes the state of IPR declarations against the ISO/IEC draft standard for VCB. Note 1: Panasonic and Mitsubishi Electric are also listed as "Primary Licensors" under the VP8 Cross-License agreement as reported in section B of the Duane Morris paper [DM]. 3. VP8 Related Litigation +------------------------------+-----------------+--------------+ | VP8 Related Litigation | Status | Note/Ref | +------------------------------+-----------------+--------------+ | Nokia v HTC - Germany | Settlement $$ | Note 2 | | Nokia v HTC - US-ITC | Settlement $$ | Note 3 | | VSL/Max Sound v Google - US | Recently Filed | Note 4 | | Nullify '881 - Germany | Active | by Google | | Nullify '177 - Germany | Active | by Google | +------------------------------+-----------------+--------------+ Table 3 - VP8 Related Litigation Table 3 summarizes the publically available cases of litigation against VP8. There are five cases, two of which have settled for an undisclosed monetary amount. A third case was recently filed. Two Nokia patent nullification cases brought by Google are active. Note 2: The German court suspended the '881 Patent infringement case to allow the invalidity case to proceed first, which happens in a separate court. The German court dismissed the '177 Patent infringement case. Before any decisions on the '881 Patent, Nokia and HTC submitted a joint motion to terminate the infringement and invalidity cases based upon their reaching a global "settlement" on all then-pending patent litigation, which included HTC payments of an undisclosed amount to Nokia. This motion was granted. Benham, et al. Expires May 7, 2015 [Page 4] Internet-Draft VP8 related litigation status November 2014 Note 3: The US-ITC did not issue a ruling on the alleged infringement or invalidity of the '211 Patent. Instead, Nokia and HTC submitted a joint motion to terminate the investigation based upon their reaching a global "settlement" on all then-pending patent litigation, which included HTC payments of an undisclosed amount to Nokia. This motion was granted, concluding the US-ITC's investigation. No active litigation was found trying to separately nullify the '211 Patent. Note 4: This lawsuit was recently bought against Google for the infringement of VSL's '339 Patent in its products such as VP8, VP9, WebM, YouTube.com, etc. 4. IANA Considerations There are no IANA considerations for this document. 5. Security Considerations There are no Security considerations for this document. 6. References 6.1. Normative References 6.2. Informative References [DM] Duane Morris, LLP., "Summary of Known Patent Litigation Related to VP8," October 27, 2014, . [ERC1] LM Ericsson, "Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson (publ)'s Statement about IPR related to RFC 6386," May 14, 2014, [GOOG1] Google Inc., "Google Inc's Statement of IPR Related to draft-bankoski-vp8-bitstream-02.," May 18, 2011, [GOOG2] Google Inc., "Patent Statement and Licensing Declaration for ISO/IEC 14496-31," June 30, 2014, [MSFT1] Microsoft Corporation, "Patent Statement and Licensing Declaration for ISO/IEC 14496-31," July 9, 2014, Benham, et al. Expires May 7, 2015 [Page 5] Internet-Draft VP8 related litigation status November 2014 [NOK1] Nokia Corporation, "Nokia Corporation's Statement about IPR related to RFC 6386," March 21, 2013, Authors' Addresses David Benham Cisco Systems, Inc. 170 W Tasman Dr. San Jose USA Email: dbenham@cisco.com Jonathan Rosenberg Cisco 170 West Tasman Drive San Jose, CA 95134 USA Email: jdrosen@cisco.com Benham, et al. Expires May 7, 2015 [Page 6]