German Court Issues More Verdicts against ODS.Verdicts in One of Europe's Largest Patent Litigation An action brought in court to enforce a particular right. The act or process of bringing a lawsuit in and of itself; a judicial contest; any dispute. When a person begins a civil lawsuit, the person enters into a process called litigation. Actions Further Confirm Need for MPEG-2 Patents in DVD DVD: see digital versatile disc. DVD in full digital video disc or digital versatile disc Type of optical disc. The DVD represents the second generation of compact-disc (CD) technology. Video Disc Production DENVER -- Today the leading District Court for patent infringement patent infringement n. the manufacture and/or use of an invention or improvement for which someone else owns a patent issued by the government, without obtaining permission of the owner of the patent by contract, license or waiver. in Germany, the Landgericht Dusseldorf, has announced six additional verdicts finding that DVD disc manufacturer Optical Disc Service ("ODS (Operational Data Store) A database designed for queries on transactional data. An ODS is often an interim or staging area for a data warehouse, but differs in that its contents are updated in the course of business, whereas a data warehouse contains static data. ") has infringed certain patents licensed in the MPEG-2 Patent Portfolio License offered by MPEG LA (MPEG LA, LLC, Denver, CO, www.mpegla.com) The organization that offers joint licenses and collects royalties for patents necessary for MPEG-2, MPEG-4 and other technologies. For example, in the MPEG-2 license, 23 companies hold more than 600 essential patents. , LLC (Logical Link Control) See "LANs" under data link protocol. LLC - Logical Link Control as a result of ODS's manufacture of DVD video discs. This brings to 14 the total number of cases in which the Landgericht Dusseldorf has found ODS liable for infringement of patents licensed in the MPEG-2 Patent Portfolio license. In November 2006 the Landgericht Dusseldorf announced eight such verdicts. As a result of several patent holders enforcing the earlier verdicts, and even though the verdicts can be appealed, ODS must cease and desist Cease and desist (also called C & D) is a legal term used primarily in the United States which essentially means "to halt" or "to end" an action ("cease") and to refrain from doing it again in the future ("desist"). its current DVD production which uses the enforced patents, and pay damages to the patent owners for past production. See http://www.mpegla.com/news/n_07-01-03_pr.pdf, http://www.mpegla.com/news/n_06-12-21_pr.pdf and http://www.mpegla.com/news/n_06-11-30_pr.pdf. In its earlier decisions, which have since been published, the Landgericht Dusseldorf established that DVD video discs and other record carriers carrying data structures generated by applying a patent protected coding method (such as the MPEG-2 Standard "without whose technical standardization mass dissemination of the DVD technology would be inconceivable") constitute infringing products of a patent protected method. The Landgericht Dusseldorf also confirmed the acceptability of MPEG (Moving Pictures Experts Group) An ISO/ITU standard for compressing digital video. Pronounced "em-peg," it is the universal standard for digital terrestrial, cable and satellite TV, DVDs and digital video recorders (DVRs). LA's MPEG-2 Patent Portfolio License. The MPEG-2 Standard is the core technology underlying the efficient creation, transmission, storage and display of digitized moving images and soundtracks on which DVD and other digital technologies are based; DVD-Video Discs in accordance with the DVD-Video Standard (DVD Specifications for Read-Only Disc, Part 3: VIDEO SPECIFICATIONS) contain information formatted in accordance with the MPEG-2 standard. MPEG LA, LLC MPEG LA is the world leader in alternative technology licenses, enabling users to acquire worldwide patent rights necessary for a technology standard or platform from multiple patent holders in a single transaction as an alternative to negotiating separate licenses. Wherever an independently administered one-stop patent license would provide a convenient marketplace alternative to assist users with implementation of their technology choices, the licensing model pioneered and employed by MPEG LA may provide a solution. Among MPEG LA's licenses is one for MPEG-2 digital video compression Encoding digital video to take up less storage space and transmission bandwidth. See video codec and data compression. video compression - Compression of sequences of images. that has helped produce the most widely employed standard in consumer electronics history. The MPEG-2 Patent Portfolio License, which includes approximately 800 MPEG-2 essential patents in 57 countries, has more than 1000 licensees accounting for most MPEG-2 products, including an estimated 90% of all DVD discs, in the current world market. MPEG LA is an independent licensing administrator; it is not related to any standards agency and is not an affiliate of any patent holder. For more information, please refer to http://www.mpegla.com. |
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