International Telecommunication Union New Delhi, India, December 2011 ITU Workshop on Standards and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Issues Dr. Ir. Serge RAES, Intellectual Property & Standards Manager France Telecom — Orange Software Copyrights issues
International Telecommunication Union New Delhi, India, December 2011 Internal Organization IP & Licensing R&D Research & Strategy Legal IP ProcurementOrange Labs & Network Carriers Standardization & Ecosystems Dev. IP & Standardization Co-Ordination
International Telecommunication Union What is Software ? ITU and ETSI adopted a very broad definition A lot of this Software should be regarded as normal contributed "text", except for its "use" Special Royalty-Free for data structures (mandatory use) w/o additional restriction Text in standards: SSO receives copyrights in the final standard Initial contributor retains copyrights in the contribution's contents
International Telecommunication Union Specific regime for codecs For voice or video coding, the standard is described by software in a programming language (e.g. ANSI C) prevailing over text ITU HEVC (successor of H.264) is developped collaboratively by many contributors ITU voice coders (G.711.1, G.718) are developped by a small group of companies Avoid incorporation of 3rd Party software that could contaminate the whole standard
International Telecommunication Union Source code contributions France Telecom – Orange is one of the few main contributors [ ITU Declarations: 17/116 Skills required: a good combination of Tech leader in media compression Good analyst/programmer Software deliveries: Source code in fixed point representation Source code in floating point
International Telecommunication Union Other application of source code Future standard development methods as a faster and more efficient track to market delivery/adoption Enables dynamic standard behaviour simulation and fine-tuning Migration to System On a Chip Vigilence required on validating copyright licensing terms and conditions are compatible with original intent / licensing conditions Both at company internal and SSO levels
International Telecommunication Union Example of France Telecom strategy File for Software Copyrights protection official date (in France [ Licensing of software copyrights in a standard source code is not considered as a business, unlike for Essential Patent rights Natural companion to Essential Patents licensing in Patent Pools e.g. ITU G.729 royalty distribution and DVB/ETSI CSA (HW implementation)
International Telecommunication Union Conclusion Software copyrights infringement is not a serious threat (yet) in ICT industry: no litigation reported so far However, companies should be prepared before making Software contributions to SSO Representation and warranty Countries should be cautious in attempting to make local adaptations to existing standards containing Software Risk of loosing both Copyright and Essential Patent licensing commitments
International Telecommunication Union Thank you Serge RAES Intellectual Property & Standards Senior Manager c/o France Telecom - Orange Office IB 313T rue du Général Leclerc F Issy Les Moulineaux France Tel: Fax: