This is all well and good news, but the one question I haven't seen answered anywhere is what happens in 2015 when the MPEG LA can set new rates? As I understand it, there are some limits on the amount of rate increases on a per-unit basis, but none of those restrictions apply to the caps; they'd be free to abolish the caps entirely if they wanted. While the caps aren't going away (since some of MPEG LA's most valued members undoubtedly rely on them), the new rates could presumably add further restrictions targeted at what Cisco is doing here, with H.264 even further established.
So what happens in 2015 if Cisco is on the hook for a substantially larger bill than $65M, not just from an increase in the cap (which already has been increasing quite quickly), but by changes in the license terms that attempt to clamp down on this licensing hack? If Cisco chooses not to continue under such conditions, what is the status of the millions of existing binary codecs previously distributed?
What happens in 2015?
Date: 2013-10-31 09:09 am (UTC)So what happens in 2015 if Cisco is on the hook for a substantially larger bill than $65M, not just from an increase in the cap (which already has been increasing quite quickly), but by changes in the license terms that attempt to clamp down on this licensing hack? If Cisco chooses not to continue under such conditions, what is the status of the millions of existing binary codecs previously distributed?