[ale] Phillips CD patent

[Christopher Bergeron]

Looks to me like a total "scare" letter.  They're trying to [ab]use you 
as a registered customer (I'm assuming thats how they got your info) 
into helping them find companies that aren't paying royalties, or that 
are developing "clone" drives and not paying Philips.  Letters like 
these just show how the company doesn't care about the "consumer" at 
all, and just about their profits.  IMHO, it appears that they're 
sending these "officially looking legal threat documents" in an attempt 
to get some info on the competition and possibly sue any infringers of 
thier IP.  They're not threatening you and they didn't make any demands 
in the letter, so I would disregard it (but that's just my opinion).  

I think it's still pretty sleazy of that company... and I will learn 
from your experience and _NEVER_ purchase a product from Philips.  

As always, others may have differing opinions...

-CB



James P. Kinney III wrote:

>OK. I tried posting a tarball f the scanned images of the letter, but
>there is a max size on the list that prevents it. So I put them on my
>webserver
>
>http://www.localnetsolutions.com/~jkinney/
>
>The images are big.
>
>On Sat, 2002-12-14 at 17:40, Christopher Bergeron wrote:
>  
>
>>Hmmm.. IANAL, but this sounds like a scare tactic.  If you bought a 
>>product and aren't the manufacturer of the drive, I don't think you can 
>>be held accountable for creating cdroms/dvdroms with the device.  Since 
>>you're not "creating" the cdroms by hand (as if it were possible), and 
>>you're using a vendor's device, the vendor should be the only person 
>>that can be accountable.
>>
>>Thats just my belief, but as I said, I Am Not A Lawyer.
>>
>>-CB
>>
>>Any possibility of you posting the letter or a scanned image of it?
>>
>>
>>
>>James P. Kinney III wrote:
>>
>>    
>>
>>>I just got the strangest letter from Phillips IP legal group. Basically,
>>>they own butt loads of patents on CD technology. Including the making of
>>>the disks themselves. Apparently, there are some cd-r cd-rw and dvd-r
>>>and dvd-rw disk makers that are not paying out their license fees to
>>>Phillips for the making of the media. So the letter is a warning that if
>>>I, or my company specifically, is using any of the "bootleg" blank
>>>disks, Phillips will then consider that I am an accomplice and will be
>>>subject to paying the license fee on the disks myself.
>>>
>>>WTF!!!
>>>
>>> 
>>>
>>>      
>>>
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>>    
>>


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