Anti-Piracy Patents for Cell Phones Pooled

MPEG LA, which holds the patents for MPEG-2, has convinced InterTrust, ContentGuard, Sony, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co (the worlds biggest maker of consumer electronics, including Panasonic) and Dutch Philips Electronics to pool their patents which are “essential anti-piracy patents for a standard set by the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA), an organization of handset makers and mobile telecoms operators.” Some more quotes: “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…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.”

Comments have been disabled for this post