Does the "non pro" license restrict you?

I

Indyreel

Well-known member
I read the AVC patent portfolio license (mentioned on this forum) written on the back of the user's manual.

It states that "This product is licensed under the AVC patent portfolio license for personal and non-commercial use of a consumer... etc."

Does this mean that you cannot produce a film, documentary, DVD or theatrical release, etc. and sell it or make it available commercially.? i.e. Does the license restrict your ability to sell or distribute your project commercially, in any way?
 
I don't know how they can expect that people won't be shooting commercial stuff with it...

Kholi shot some commercial using GH1, now can panasonic do anything about it?
 
The license does not apply to footage shot in AVCHD, the license applies to the codec itself - for example it's computer code, software, firmware, design, etc.

So the answer is 100% NO, not, nah, negative, nein.
 
If you reverse engineered the codec? Used a AVCHD encoding chip in your home made camera and sold it on eBay?

It is a completely separate issue to footage.
 
Commanderspike's interpretation is a little wide of the mark I think.

http://www.mpegla.com/avc/index.cfm contains seven sections which you will need to study to get the full picture.

In essence, the the AVC/H.264 (MPEG-4 Part 10) digital video coding standard incorporates elements in which the following companies have patents:-

Apple Inc.

DAEWOO Electronics Corporation

Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corporation

Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute

France Télécom, société anonyme*

Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Foerderung der angewandten Forschung e.V.

Fujitsu Limited

Hitachi, Ltd.

Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V.

LG Electronics Inc.

Microsoft Corporation

Mitsubishi Electric Corporation

NTT DOCOMO, INC.

Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation

Panasonic Corporation

Robert Bosch GmbH*

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.

Scientific-Atlanta Vancouver Company

Sedna Patent Services, LLC

Sharp Corporation

Siemens AG

Sony Corporation

The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York

Toshiba Corporation

Victor Company of Japan, Ltd.

Quite a few fingers in the pie, huh? Even though Panasonic have patents themselves, they still have to pay the others involved for the use of their contributions to the technology.

These companies use MPEG LA to licence companies using technology covered by the patents, so that it's not necessary for anyone wanting to use the technology to negotiate with all those companies individually. That encourages the use of the technology, rather than its use being inhibited by the patents, so everyone's a winner.

The patents cover not only the means to create video content (hardware and software) but also the commercial use of the content itself. So if you set up a business distributing content on AVCHD DVDs for instance you'd need a licence from MPEG LA. If you set up a business distributing AVCHD content over the internet even if the end users were not paying for it, you'd need a licence (currently free).

In order to protect the interests of the patent holders, when a device using the patents is sold, it is not sold with a licence allowing the user to then use it themselves to make money directly from the patented technology. So if you use the GH1 to create AVCHD content which you then distribute as AVCHD as a business, the fact that you paid for the GH1 doesn't mean you paid for the right to distribute AVCHD content. You can use the GH1 to replay AVCHD content created by someone else as a personal and non-commercial activity, but you are not licenced to use it to replay AVCHD content created by someone else as part of a business who is not licenced to distribute it.

My reading would be that once you've transcoded content made for professional purposes to something else, and you distribute it in that other form, then you are no longer required to obtain a licence. However, you'd need to be sure that the other form was itself not covered by another patent!

It's not much different from the mp3 situation, where licences are required if you make commercial use of the patented form of that audio codec (eg make an mp3 player or distribute mp3 recordings made using the real codec).

Actually you can't really imply anything about the design intent of the GH1 from these licencing considerations as the most pro device imaginable would still be sold on the same terms, so my own comments to that effect were wide of the mark.
 
Ahh, well I disagree. This is a complete none-issue.

It's like saying you can't drink coke while making your movie, because you don't own the recipe.

Or you can't use Final Cut Pro for professional work because Apple own the patent on it.

Does anyone actually believe there is a practical problem here? Ozpeter's reading of the license may well be accurate but raw AVCHD is almost always transcoded to a different format, and even then I have trouble believing that you need to pay the license holder of the codec every time your movie gets played on Vimeo :)
 
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If Vimeo are distributing content covered by the patents, then I would expect that they've obtained a licence (it's them who would need the licence, not the individual contributors). If not, and if they indeed need one, then they are a rather high profile target and MPEG LA will probably send them a letter. You or I are unlikely to fall foul of the licence terms and should we accidentally do so, I rather doubt whether MPEG LA would be aware of it.

It's all about protecting the patentees from having someone make bucketloads of money directly from technology that the patentees have spent a lot of money developing, without the patentees seeing a cent of it.
 
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