GSM Association Press Releases 2007
GSMA welcomes moves toward clarity on OMA DRM Licensing
09th February
2007 - London: The GSM Association (GSMA) today welcomed the announcement of a patent licensing program for Digital Rights Management (DRM) services by Intertrust Technologies. Uncertainty around licensing has delayed the adoption of open standards for DRM to date. The licensing program provides a license to software providers for all patents from Intertrust, Philips and Sony used by open standards body Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) and/or Marlin DRM services for a single price, and is a major step in enabling the adoption of open standards for mobile DRM. The license is also available to network operators.
"This licensing program provides clarity around the expectations of several major potential patent holders," said Alex Sinclair, CTO of the GSMA. "It represents a first move towards providing fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing terms for OMA DRM and serves as a constructive template for the industry. We call on all other companies claiming essential patents in OMA DRM to provide similar transparency and coalesce around a single licensing approach."
This development signals that the industry is moving away from the confusion caused by previous licensing scheme announcements for OMA DRM, which were rejected by mobile operators and the GSMA as unfair and unreasonable.
"Open standards and DRM interoperability are essential to the success of mobile content distribution," said Sinclair. "We believe that this development will help unlock the exciting technical work conducted by OMA and allow operators to offer rich content services to their customers in the very near future."
About the GSM Association
The GSM Association (GSMA) is the global trade association representing more than 700 GSM mobile phone operators across 218 countries and territories of the world. In addition, more than 200 manufacturers and suppliers support the Association's initiatives as key partners.
The primary goals of the GSMA are to ensure mobile phones and wireless services work globally and are easily accessible, enhancing their value to individual customers and national economies, while creating new business opportunities for operators and their suppliers. The Association's members serve more than 2 billion customers - more than 80% of the world's mobile phone users.
For more information please contact:
Mark Smith / David Pringle
GSM Association
Email:press@gsm.org
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