Re: persuading mobile phone manufacturers to implement Vorbis support

A few years ago patent research was done by a top law firm on behalf of 
a large multinational corporation who was at that time employing several 
Vorbis developers. The law firm did not believe that any of the patents 
looked were infringed on by Vorbis, and the multinational was given the 
go ahead by their legal counsel to continue developing Vorbis.

As for "whether any patents could possibly be violated", that is 
impossible to know without a crystal ball as shown by Microsoft just 
losing that lawsuit for well over $1 billion over their use of MP3.

Especially when compared to that, Xiph is on extremely solid ground. ;-)

-Brian

Alexander van Loon wrote:
> Conrad Parker: 
>
> I'll gladly help with drafting a letter in the Xiph wiki. But I assume
> we would be sending this letter under the name of the Xiph.Org
> Foundation? I doubt that sending a letter to Nokia's customer service
> would have much effect if I'd send it under my personal name, likely it
> would end up in a desk drawer catching dust. Link to the draft:
> http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/Letter_to_Nokia
>
> Jeff Waugh:
>
> Cool to see you replying. I love reading Planet GNOME, thanks for your
> work on that website. Strange that you didn't receive the original
> e-mail? In the archives -
> http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/advocacy/2007-May/thread.html - your
> mail to the list doesn't show up either. But concerning the unclear
> patent encumbrances, possibly the Xiph.Org Foundation can do a patent
> audit of some kind to research if any patents could possibly be
> infringed? And it's possible to fight the validity of patents in the
> court, right? Or is it just that many companies don't want any trouble,
> i.e. no lawsuits? And Jeff, given GNOME's involvement with Nokia's N770
> and N800 devices and the GNOME Mobile & Embedded Initiative, possibly
> you know people at Nokia with authority to whom we could address this
> letter to?
>
> Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves:
>
> Thank you for your information, I'll use your page as a guide to writing
> the draft letter.
>
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