[WinMac] Intel missing from 1394 patent pool, believed lost

Daniel L. Schwartz(expresso[at]snip.net)
Thu, 25 Nov 1999 11:25:09 -0500

        A while back, in April or May, I took a pot shot at Apple for their steep
licensing fees for IEEE 1394, a/k/a "FireWire." The implications were that
there was the formation of the 1394 LA body (patent pool), which trimmed
the 1394 licensing from $1 per port to 25 cents per system... And then all
looked well for FireWire to spread across the landscape.

        Well, guess what? Now it's time to take a pot shot at Intel, because they
pulled out of the patent pool. From The Register,
 <http://www.theregister.co.uk/991124-000002.html>:

 -----

Intel missing from 1394 patent pool, believed lost

The IEEE 1394 patent pool has finally got its act together and set up a
body to oversee the licensing of the intellectual property central to the
connectivity standard.

And while 1394's usual suspects can now get on growing support for the
technology among PC vendors and consumer electronics manufacturers, they'll
be doing so without the backing of Intel.

Chipzilla, it seems, has left the building.

The 1394 patent pool was created earlier this year after Apple, the
developer of the core technology and owner of a stack of 1394 IP, caused a
furore by charging third-parties up to $1 per port to incorporate the
technology into their own systems. Long-time 1394 supporters Sony, Compaq,
Philips, Matsushita, Toshiba and STMicroelectronics called the Mac maker to
account and forced it to share not only its IP, but reduce the licensing
fees.

Administration of 1394 IP licensing is now being handled by the newly
formed 1394 LA body, which controls the use of the shared patents and
charges 25 cents per system for the privilege.

Intel joined the 1394 patent party in May after its formation, although not
before it had announced a new version of its Universal Serial Bus
technology which it claimed would offer comparable performance to 1394.

However, it now appears to have collected its coat and made a discrete
exit. One of the 1394 LA's first tasks was to seek independent verification
of the degree to which the patents were essential for compliance with the
1394 specifications and their various sub-sets.

The head of 1394 LA, Larry Horn, cited by TechWeb, said that there were
three possible reasons why Intel plus fellow ex-patent poolers Mitsubishi
and Zayante are no longer in the pool: "Either their patents are still in
the process of being evaluated, they were declared to have no essential
IPs, or they joined the group last May simply to express their support for
the concept of a joint licensing program. [But] no conclusions should be
directly drawn from this."

Three reasons offered and three companies are currently out of the pool --
and he doesn't want anyone to draw conclusions from it? Hmmm.

It's not hard to see which of these reasons could easily be applied to
Intel. In any case, it suggests Chipzilla was never entirely serious about
1394 in the first place -- it wanted in case it couldn't get USB 2.0 up to
spec. in time or at all. Now that it reckons USB 2.0 will hit speeds higher
than 1394's current 400Mbps, it doesn't need to work on 1394 and can
instead focus its efforts on promoting USB. ®

 -----

        Happy Thanksgiving, all!
        Dan

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This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b2 on Thu Nov 25 1999 - 09:11:56 PST