Links 04/04/2008
April 4, 2008An antitrust think tank asked the Federal Trade Commission to step in to the patent fight between Rembrandt IP Management and the TV industry over a key element in the digital-TV transition.
Rembrandt IP Management
In a petition to the commission, the American Antitrust Institute asked it to investigate
Rembrandt — which holds the patent on a key element in the DTV-transmission standard — for “anticompetitive conduct that threatens the digital-television conversion.”
Critics Speak Out On ISO’s OOXML Ruling – Software – IT Channel News by CRN and VARBusiness
tags: standards
While Microsoft may have won the battle to make OOXML a recognized standard by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), opponents are not going quietly into the night.
Bob Sutor, IBM’s executive vice president of standards, wrote in a blog post that now that the process of international standards making has been “laid bare for all to examine,” some may not like what they’re finding.
The American Antitrust Institute is calling on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to initiate an investigation of anticompetitive conduct by Rembrandt, Inc. that will increase the costs of the conversion to digital television for millions of consumers. In a petition filed before the FTC today, the AAI alleged that Rembrandt violated policies of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC), a private standard setting body, that intellectual property involved in the digital television standard must be licensed on a reasonable and nondiscriminatory basis.
